From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 2 00:31:08 2000
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Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 03:26:40 -0500
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Vince Sabio
Subject: Re: A lesson about verifying transferred lists
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** Sometime around 11:00 -0800 02/29/2000, Ronald F. Guilmette sent us:
>Sharon Tucci wrote:
>
> >{... list transfer story snipped...}
>
> >The number of bounces was what we expected - about 8-9%...
>
>Actually, that sounds rather high to me.
>
>If the old list hosting company _was_ actually cleaning out bouncing
>addresses, why would you expect more than (say) 3-4%, tops?
I disagree -- and not [just] because it's fun to disagree with you,
Ron. Consider the fact that the list had been dormant for two months;
that's plenty of time for a considerable number of e-mail addresses
to go bad.
If this had been mailed to within the past couple of weeks, I'd agree
with your 3-4% figure. But 8-9% is pretty reasonable after a
two-month hiatus IMO. (Speaking as a list owner for whom a two-month
hiatus is pretty common.)
__________________________________________________________________________
Vince Sabio Got Bounces?
vince@vjs.org Got Jokes?
Got Spam?
From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 2 00:46:08 2000
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Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 03:22:40 -0500
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Vince Sabio
Subject: Re: A lesson about verifying transferred lists
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** Sometime around 11:37 -0500 02/29/2000, Sharon Tucci sent us:
Just to provide another opinion/data point here ...
>We
>received one complaint direct to us from someone who, when we
>questioned it, said they didn't recognize the list address.
>(Given that the list was moved to our service, the list address
>would have obviously changed.)
>
>The welcome message provided removal information and about 2%
>unsubscribed.
>
>Because of the high unsubscribe rate and the complaint,
WHAT???
First of all, 2% is not at all a "high unsubscribe rate," especially
for a list that has been dormant for a couple of months. I'd expect
the unsubscribe rate to be higher than that.
And ONE complaint out of 4000? And you even pointed out yourself that
the subscriber was probably confused by the domain change.
>we went
>back to the client and said the only way we could handle their
>list was if everyone was required to opt-in once again.
I believe you overreacted, though there's certainly no harm in it. At
least, not at this point ...
>Client agreed - saying that they want to make sure that the list is
>clean and 100% opt-in.
This client is more forgiving than most.
>We did the two step with 20000 additional subscribers. Each
>person received one email telling them that the list was being
>moved to our service and that we required people to confirm
>their subscription... so in order to receive future messages,
>they would need to hit reply to the verification message.
>
>Here's where the fun starts. Of the 20,000, again, the
>number of bounces was normal - what we had expected. However,
>we've received three spam complaints in less than 24 hours.
>So, in total, we've received more spam complaints from about
>24,000 recipients than we normally do in 6 months across
>hundreds of new lists.
This is, as Dave pointed out, totally insignificant. I run a large
mailing list with a confirmation loop, and I *still* routinely (well,
a coupla times a year) receive "complaints" from people who claim
that I am spamming them. My guess is, most often it's a child or a
sibling or even a friend who has access to the mailbox and does the
subscribing -- possibly as a joke -- and the poor clueless mailbox
owner then starts receiving what he thinks is spam. Many seem to be
too daft to figure out the unsubscription instructions that are
included in the footer of EVERY message (most probably don't read
down that far), and it's easier to simply reply and tell me that I'm
spamming them.
I have a form letter I send them which includes unsubscription
instructions; I rarely hear from them again.
Three such complaints on a newly-moved list out of more than 18,000
delivered e-mails isn't even worth noting, Sharon.
>The problem is what do we do about this?
Move his list. If it helps you sleep at night, require everyone to
re-up to the list. But I think even that is an overreaction. The
numbers you've quoted are really pretty good.
>to handle the re-opt-in process themselves. But my gut won't
>let me advise this because I really do think that the list
>has been seeded with email addresses who haven't opted in.
I think your complaint rate would be MUCH higher if that were the case.
>FWIW, we had two other situations where lists provided
>by other list hosting services had addresses on the list
>that shouldn't have been there. With both situations, it
>was a single email address that should have been removed
>that wasn't.
Sharon, no list of any reasonable size will be 100%. As I said, even
confirmation loops aren't perfect; if someone else has access to the
mailbox, then all bets are off.
__________________________________________________________________________
Vince Sabio Got Bounces?
vince@vjs.org Got Jokes?
Got Spam?
From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 2 05:46:04 2000
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Message-ID:
Subject: Re: A lesson about verifying transferred lists
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 00 08:42:19 -0500
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>>we went
>>back to the client and said the only way we could handle their
>>list was if everyone was required to opt-in once again.
>
>I believe you overreacted, though there's certainly no harm in it. At
>least, not at this point ...
I must say I have some sympathy with Sharons concern regarding complaints
generated from her new clients list.
I think it's important to recognize there is a difference between being
the owner of a handful of lists, and a host for many paying clients. I
would also keep in mind that no ISP I've ever met has the time or
inclination to launch a detailed investigation in to a specific spam
complaint. Rather, they judge you by the volume of complaints they
receive about you, without a lot of regard to the exact validity of any
specific complaint.
Anyone who is now inclined to advise me to get a new ISP would receive
this question: Can I put the 600,000 sometimes irrational readers we
serve on your T-1? What's your comfort level with death threats? :-)
I wouldn't care to advise Sharon on exactly how she should respond to
this particular situation, she knows her business better than I
obviously. But I do have an appreciation of the fact that someone in
her position has to take all complaints, valid or invalid, very
seriously. Logic and common sense is a poor guide to this issue in my
experience.
Phil
From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 2 09:46:40 2000
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From: "Mike Avery"
To:
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 11:45:47 -0600
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Subject: Re: A lesson about verifying transferred lists
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On 2 Mar 2000, at 8:42, tanny wrote:
> >>we went
> >>back to the client and said the only way we could handle their
> >>list was if everyone was required to opt-in once again.
> >I believe you overreacted, though there's certainly no harm in it. At
> > least, not at this point ...
> I must say I have some sympathy with Sharons concern regarding
> complaints generated from her new clients list.
> I think it's important to recognize there is a difference between
> being the owner of a handful of lists, and a host for many paying
> clients. I would also keep in mind that no ISP I've ever met has the
> time or inclination to launch a detailed investigation in to a
> specific spam complaint. Rather, they judge you by the volume of
> complaints they receive about you, without a lot of regard to the
> exact validity of any specific complaint.
> Anyone who is now inclined to advise me to get a new ISP would receive
> this question: Can I put the 600,000 sometimes irrational readers we
> serve on your T-1? What's your comfort level with death threats?
> :-)
> I wouldn't care to advise Sharon on exactly how she should respond to
> this particular situation, she knows her business better than I
> obviously. But I do have an appreciation of the fact that someone in
> her position has to take all complaints, valid or invalid, very
> seriously. Logic and common sense is a poor guide to this issue in
> my experience.
Well.... Vince has excellent experience and has been around mailing
lists a long time. I host a number of lists. One of the moderators
has slowed down of late. And, as a result, I think Vince is right.
People lose interest. People change ISP's. People forget stuff.
So... let's imagine we lowered the curtain on this list for two months.
And then we moved it to a new provider, let's say onelist.com. And
then we sent out a note on the list. Suddenly, even though the first
message started out with, "Hi, we've moved to OneList!", the stuff
would hit the fan.
If the switch-over coincided with a semester break, the "death rate"
would be higher - schools change student accounts, companies move
their staff to coincide with school schedules - so somewhere from 2
to 8 percent of the addresses would become invalid and bounce. If
you have software (like Vince's) that handles bounces, that's
background noise.
More will forget that they were ever in a list called List-Managers.
And some will get pissy because it's on OneList now. So there will be
hate mail.
Even on lists that have had no hiatus I've had people write me that
they've been trying to unsubscribe for two years (note... unsubing is
easy, and each message has instructions in it... I imagine them
hunkered over their keyboard for two years, "No, I can't come to
bed yet, I haven't managed to unsubscribe from this list!!!")
There is a reason old Unix admins call 'em lusers.
I don't think after two months of no service a 2% bounce rate, or
even 8%, is all that high. And two complaints isn't bad either.
I recently dealt with a company that had been harvesting email
addresses from their web page for several years without using them.
It is a software house that markets a fairly well regarded email
package. They needed to inform people that there was a Y2K issue,
and how to resolve it. Many people put in bad email addresses.
Many people moved in the two years. I had over a 30% bounce rate.
And many angry complaints. "Who are you? How did you get my
name?" *sigh* One person tried to get me in trouble with my ISP.
I have been dealing with them for years, so I called 'em and
explained. Another turned me into orbs. Since I don't relay, I'm
not listed there.
Y'know... the levels of problems dealt the first poster had to deal
with just don't seem that severe to me.... they sound like a vacation!
Mike
(Who won't handle another mass mailing like that one...)
--
Mike Avery MAvery@mail.otherwhen.com
(409)-842-2942 (voice)
(409)-842-4352 (FAX)
ICQ: 16241692
* Spam is for lusers who can't get business any other way *
A Randomly Selected Thought For The Day:
Hane's Law: There is no limit to how bad things can get.
From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 2 10:46:53 2000
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To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: A lesson about verifying transferred lists
In-reply-to: Your message of Thu, 02 Mar 2000 03:26:40 -0500.
Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 10:42:22 -0800
Message-ID: <81632.952022542@monkeys.com>
From: "Ronald F. Guilmette"
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In message ,
Vince Sabio wrote:
>** Sometime around 11:00 -0800 02/29/2000, Ronald F. Guilmette sent us:
>>Sharon Tucci wrote:
>>
>> >{... list transfer story snipped...}
>>
>> >The number of bounces was what we expected - about 8-9%...
>>
>>Actually, that sounds rather high to me.
>>
>>If the old list hosting company _was_ actually cleaning out bouncing
>>addresses, why would you expect more than (say) 3-4%, tops?
>
>I disagree -- and not [just] because it's fun to disagree with you,
>Ron. Consider the fact that the list had been dormant for two months;
>that's plenty of time for a considerable number of e-mail addresses
>to go bad.
>
>If this had been mailed to within the past couple of weeks, I'd agree
>with your 3-4% figure. But 8-9% is pretty reasonable after a
>two-month hiatus IMO. (Speaking as a list owner for whom a two-month
>hiatus is pretty common.)
Agreed.
(I didn't see any mention of a ``two month hiatus'' in the original
message, but perhaps I just missed it. Anyway, yes, after 2 months,
8-9% might go bad.)
From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 2 11:31:04 2000
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To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Cc: postmaster@qualcomm.com, webmaster@qualcomm.com, eudora-pr@qualcomm.com,
eudora-custserv@qualcomm.com, eudora-sales@qualcomm.com
Subject: Mailing Lists Done Right (for a change)
Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 11:35:06 -0800
Message-ID: <81754.952025706@monkeys.com>
From: "Ronald F. Guilmette"
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Amazingly, just a couple of days after I posted to List-Managers my
comments regarding what should and (more importantly) what should not
be contained in an initial greeting message (or a subscriber confirmation
or re-confirmation message) from any given mailing list, I received the
message below from Qualcomm.
The message below was definitely triggered by my act of having downloaded
the latest version of Eudora recently. (I did that recently.)
This is a wonderful example of how to do things right, and I want to com-
pliment the people at Qualcomm for taking the time to do it right.
Please look at the following message, and as you do, please note that:
o It is essentially devoid of anything that could be construed as
``advertising copy''. (Good!)
o It indicates that if I *do not* respond in any way, my ``profile''
will be automatically deleted from their records within two weeks.
(Good!)
o It goes the extra mile to give me detailed information about how/
where/when my e-mail address got onto their list. Specifically, it
provides the exact date, time, and IP address from whence this
subscription originated. (GOOD!) This information is, of course,
critical for tracking down the perp, when/if someone is using
Qualcomm's web sign-up form to repeatedly harass me.
It is worthy of note also that the message *does not* start off with a bunch
of incomprehensible HTML gibberish. (Good!)
Also worthy of note is the fact that the message was sent using an ordinary
(non-variable) envelope sender address (eudora-profile@qualcomm.com). Thus,
if for any reason I was to consider these mailings inappropriate, I could
very easily block them all (in my MTA or in a sufficiently sophisticated MDA,
e.g. procmail) _without_ having to block all mail from the entire qualcomm.com
domain. (Good!) (People using variable envelope sender addresses take note!
You may perhaps want to set-aside a separate subdomain of your main domain...
like for example foobar-list.example.com... for your mailings so as to make
it easier for any postmaster who wants to block all foobar-list traffic to
do so WITHOUT also blocking all mail from your entire domain.)
Again, I want to compliment Qualcomm for providing a proof by example that
mailing lists can indeed be run both responsibly and with sincere concern
and thought for the desires of the recipient.
Ron Guilmette
P.S. I also give Qualcomm extra points for injecting a bit of levity into
the first paragraph.
P.P.S. When Qualcom mentions ``customizing ads'' in the first paragraph,
they are almost certainly talking about the ads one would see IF one elected
to actually use their new `free' version of Eudora, which, as I understand
it, allows you free use of the product in exchange for your eyeballs... a
fair bargain. I don't believe that there is any implication here that
Qualcomm is going to start blasting ads my way... at least not until I
myself `opt-in' by electing to use the free version of their product.
------- Forwarded Message
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To: rfg+eudora@MONKEYS.COM
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Thank you for filling out our survey and downloading Eudora. The
survey information will be used by Eudora for customizing the ads it
displays so that they better match your interests and your demographic
profile. The way we do this is by associating a Profile ID with your
information. We do it this way to ensure your privacy. With the
Profile ID, you are just a number to us. :-) We don't associate your
profile with your name or email address. Here is the URL for our
Privacy Policy .
WINDOWS USERS:
By now, you should have received a dialog asking you to
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If for any reason you think you need to reenter your profile ID (for
example, you clicked "No thanks" in the dialog, or you installed
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ALL USERS:
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You completed the survey on Fri, 18 Feb 2000 09:08:36 -0800,
from the host [206.14.136.180].
If you do not accept this profiling information, it will expire
two weeks from the date that you completed the survey.
- --isw6jFG_lLUCmdEQMBGX6yjD2zRXkkM
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Profile-Source-Agent: sendprofiles 1.0.3
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From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 2 14:01:06 2000
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Reply-To:
From: "Tom Baurley"
To:
Subject: changing confirm process in majordomo
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 16:58:28 -0500
Message-ID:
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Greetings -
We are in desperate search for a method to change the confirm message that
comes with Majordomo -- does anyone know how to do this? Also is it possible
to still run confirm but get rid of the approval code? We want it to be able
to be approved by simply replying to the email. Please help if you know how
as no one on the other majordomo lists we belong have replied.
Thanks,
Tom Baurley
From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 2 16:46:04 2000
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Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 19:48:47 -0500 (EST)
From: John R Levine
To: tom@baurley.com
cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: changing confirm process in majordomo
In-Reply-To:
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> We are in desperate search for a method to change the confirm message that
> comes with Majordomo -- does anyone know how to do this?
The text is in the majordomo perl script, it's easy enough to change.
Here's what I've changed it to:
We have received a request from someone asking us to add
or delete your email address to or from the $list
mailing list.
If it wasn't you, or you don't want us to do this, ignore this
message and you'll never hear from us again.
IF YOU WANT US TO TAKE THIS ACTION, send email to $whoami
and include within the body of the of the message, EXACTLY as it
appears below, the following two lines:
auth $cookie $cmd $list $subscriber
end
Be sure to REMOVE any carats (>) or other "reply" marks your
email program inserts before sending, and be sure that the "auth"
is on one line and "end" is on a separate line, or our mailing list
program will not recognize the "auth" command.
The purpose of this verification is to make sure that no one can
add or remove your name to or from our lists without your
approval. This keeps on-line vandals from ``mailbombing'' you
with unwanted mailing list memberships.
If you have any questions about the policy of the list owner,
please contact "$list-approval\@$whereami".
> Also is it possible
> to still run confirm but get rid of the approval code?
Not and still have any sort of meaningful confirmation.
> We want it to be able to be approved by simply replying to the email.
Please do NOT do that. I run a bunch of mailing lists and autoresponders
that are frequently forged into mailing lists that use "reply to confirm",
because they misinterpret bounce messages or autoreponder responses as
confirmations.
These days, the most reasonable way to do confirmations is to put a unique
URL in the confirmation message that the recipient can click on. I believe
that's in Majordomo2.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
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Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 07:54:12 -0500
From: Rich Kulawiec
To: webmaster@remarq.com, postmaster@remarq.com, hostmaster@remarq.com
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, Q_1003865_waterdog@lists.remarq.com
Subject: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by remarq
Message-ID: <20000309075412.A9102@gsp.org>
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Remarq:
This morning I noticed that Q_1003865_waterdog@lists.remarq.com has
just subscribed to the whitewater mailing list which I own and manage.
Upon searching your site, I see that several other mailing lists hosted
at gsp.org are also listed on your site, and are presented as if they
were original content created by remarq.com. There is, as far as
I can, NOTHING indicating the ownership of these mailing lists, their
policies, their procedures, or anything else. Hitting the "info"
button DOES NOT cause the list's description, operating procedures,
or anything else to appear, either.
WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?
You wouldn't by chance be repackaging content that I and the
participants in the mailing list create as your own, would you?
I expect a prompt and satisfactory explanation for this behavior
on your part. I'm CC'ing various forums used by mailing list
managers so that they are aware of what you're doing. Any response
by you may be forwarded to them as well.
Q_1003865_waterdog@lists.remarq.com:
If you're a real person (and it's hard for me to tell from the
context if you are or aren't) you're welcome to subscribe by
directly interacting with the mailing list manageer here;
or you can write me directly and I'll substitute your real
address for the one listed above.
List-managers:
You might want to drop by www.remarq.com and see if your mailing lists
are included there as well; use the search box on their home page.
---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
rsk@gsp.org
From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 9 07:33:37 2000
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Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 10:31:47 -0500 (EST)
From: John R Levine
To: Rich Kulawiec
cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by remarq
In-Reply-To: <20000309075412.A9102@gsp.org>
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> You wouldn't by chance be repackaging content that I and the
> participants in the mailing list create as your own, would you?
Gee, what a surprise.
> Q_1003865_waterdog@lists.remarq.com:
That's a real person whose login at remarq is waterdog.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
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Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 14:02:10 -0500
From: Rich Kulawiec
To: John R Levine
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by remarq
Message-ID: <20000309140210.A13152@gsp.org>
References: <20000309075412.A9102@gsp.org>
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In-Reply-To: ; from johnl@iecc.com on Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 10:31:47AM -0500
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On Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 10:31:47AM -0500, John R Levine wrote:
> > You wouldn't by chance be repackaging content that I and the
> > participants in the mailing list create as your own, would you?
>
> Gee, what a surprise.
I have the suspicion that there is some bit of well-known knowledge
that I'm missing. Several neurons in the back of my brain insist
that there was some sort of (recent?) to-do over Remarq inserting
ads into Usenet articles, but those are the same neurons which caused
me to leave off a SCSI terminator this morning, so they obviously
can't be trusted.
> > Q_1003865_waterdog@lists.remarq.com:
>
> That's a real person whose login at remarq is waterdog.
Thanks -- I figured that out after I did a bit more poking around. I found
other mailing lists that I run there as well, *and* I found out that
Remarq apparently 'rates' them based on who-knows-what criteria, *and*
that some of them are shown as having no content, when in fact they've
got traffic going through them all the time.
I am not a happy camper. Any insight that you or other people can
provide (or point me to so that I can educate myself) would be most helpful.
---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
rsk@gsp.org
From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 9 17:53:30 2000
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<20000309140210.A13152@gsp.org>
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 19:53:31 -0600
To: Rich Kulawiec , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Tim Wentz
Subject: Re: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by
remarq
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Hello,
I'm new to the list-managers list, but I can tell you what our list
went through a few weeks ago.
Our list was alerted to remarq's tactics a few weeks ago when one of
our subscribers found a new message board on remarq that delivered
the same messages she was getting from our list.
What we found was: whenever anyone subscribes to remarq's "message
board" for your list, their system sends a subscribe command to your
list. All of the messages are archived from the moment the first
remarq subscription comes through and they maintain a subscriber list
gleaned from the posts.
From the moment we realized what was happening we locked down our
list, changing the config files to require admin approval of
subscribe requests so that we could prevent remarq from receiving any
more posts.
My wife sent a list of complaints to remarq's support staff and they
removed the archives and our mailing list from their site within 24 -
36 hours.
Once we were off remarq's site, we went back to normal operations.
Tim Wentz
twentz@mc.net
Here's what was sent to remarq.
>Your company has chosen to advertise and make available to your
>subscribers the Unschooling List. While I appreciate the additional
>publicity for my list, you should be aware that you are violating
>several of the Unschooling Lists written policies by doing so. Please
>discontinue this practice immediately by removing all archives from any
>records you may have, destroying the list of names and addresses of
>subscribers you have collected and removing our name from your boards.
>
>My list of complaints to date is as follows:
>
>remarq has chosen to archive our list against our written policy, and
>make it available and even cross reference my list with many other
>lists. We have a strong 'no archives' policy in place and have for 5
>years. This is completely and totally unacceptable. Allowing our
>illegal collected archives and cross posting them to subscribers of
>other lists is not only a massive invasion of privacy - but also
>highly illegal as we have young children disccussing personal matters
>here and you are not only allowing access by the general public but
>displaying their private e-mail addresses too.
>
>remarq jeopardizes our privacy by making a list of all active list
>members available to anyone who joins the list, including
>spammers who may join for 5 minutes and then leave This violate
>written policy in my Welcome Message and in my own config files.
>
>remarq subscribers have access to other people's private ADMIN
>reminders, messages, even unsubscribed people's requests to be
>subscribed! I can't privately communicate or scold one remarq
>subscriber without all the others knowing.
>
>remarq does not allow me to communicate with a person wanting to join
>our community until after they are allowed in. I, as a list
>owner, need to be able to be sure all applicants are aware of our
>purposeand our rules. As we have children on our list, their security
>and privacy are of the utmost imporatnce to me.
>
>remarq s*ubscribers don't get the lists Welcome Message when they join,
>so they are unaware of our posting guidellines.
>
>remarq s*ubscribers seem to have between 5-10% of their daily mail
>bounced back to me as undeliverable (*very* poor service!)
>
>remarq didn't have the common courtesy to ask the list owners about our
>being included in their 'service' - or to disclose their policies,
>they just snatched us up Rather than being polite and letting a list
>'opt-in' you are insisting that a list 'opt-out' after the damage to
>privacy has already been done.
>
>remarq's privacy disclosure statement basically says you shouldn't
>expect privacy on the internet and that it isn't their problem to
>provide it. Well sirs, I assure you we had at least some privacy before
>you began archiving and cross posting my list in a public forum.
>
>
>I have required all new subscriptions to be approved, and unsubbed all
>existing remarq subscribers. Of course, as they have not unsubbed from
>remarq, they still have unlimited access to not only the illegally
>collected UL archives, but also the illegally collected address book.
>
>Again, I am requesting that all posts, all records and all mention of
>the Unschooling List please be immediately removed from your site and
>all affiliated sites.
>
>I expect written confirmation of my request by the close of business
>Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2000.
From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 9 20:24:01 2000
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<20000309140210.A13152@gsp.org>
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 22:28:14 -0600
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Tim Wentz
Subject: Re: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by
remarq
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Hello,
I'm new to the list-managers list, but I can tell you what our list
went through a few weeks ago.
Our list was alerted to remarq's tactics a few weeks ago when one of
our s*bscribers found a new message board on remarq that delivered
the same messages she was getting from our list.
What we found was: whenever anyone s*bscribes to remarq's "message
board" for your list, their system sends a s*bscribe command to your
list. All of the messages are archived from the moment the first
remarq s*bscription comes through and they maintain a s*bscriber list
gleaned from the posts.
From the moment we realized what was happening we locked down our
list, changing the config files to require admin approval of
s*bscribe requests so that we could prevent remarq from receiving any
more posts.
My wife sent a list of complaints to remarq's support staff and they
removed the archives and our mailing list from their site within 24 -
36 hours.
Once we were off remarq's site, we went back to normal operations.
Tim Wentz
twentz@mc.net
Here's what was sent to remarq.
>Your company has chosen to advertise and make available to your
>subscribers the Unschooling List. While I appreciate the additional
>publicity for my list, you should be aware that you are violating
>several of the Unschooling Lists written policies by doing so. Please
>discontinue this practice immediately by removing all archives from any
>records you may have, destroying the list of names and addresses of
>subscribers you have collected and removing our name from your boards.
>
>My list of complaints to date is as follows:
>
>remarq has chosen to archive our list against our written policy, and
>make it available and even cross reference my list with many other
>lists. We have a strong 'no archives' policy in place and have for 5
>years. This is completely and totally unacceptable. Allowing our
>illegal collected archives and cross posting them to subscribers of
>other lists is not only a massive invasion of privacy - but also
>highly illegal as we have young children disccussing personal matters
>here and you are not only allowing access by the general public but
>displaying their private e-mail addresses too.
>
>remarq jeopardizes our privacy by making a list of all active list
>members available to anyone who joins the list, including
>spammers who may join for 5 minutes and then leave This violate
>written policy in my Welcome Message and in my own config files.
>
>remarq subscribers have access to other people's private ADMIN
>reminders, messages, even unsubscribed people's requests to be
>subscribed! I can't privately communicate or scold one remarq
>subscriber without all the others knowing.
>
>remarq does not allow me to communicate with a person wanting to join
>our community until after they are allowed in. I, as a list
>owner, need to be able to be sure all applicants are aware of our
>purposeand our rules. As we have children on our list, their security
>and privacy are of the utmost imporatnce to me.
>
>remarq s*ubscribers don't get the lists Welcome Message when they join,
>so they are unaware of our posting guidellines.
>
>remarq s*ubscribers seem to have between 5-10% of their daily mail
>bounced back to me as undeliverable (*very* poor service!)
>
>remarq didn't have the common courtesy to ask the list owners about our
>being included in their 'service' - or to disclose their policies,
>they just snatched us up Rather than being polite and letting a list
>'opt-in' you are insisting that a list 'opt-out' after the damage to
>privacy has already been done.
>
>remarq's privacy disclosure statement basically says you shouldn't
>expect privacy on the internet and that it isn't their problem to
>provide it. Well sirs, I assure you we had at least some privacy before
>you began archiving and cross posting my list in a public forum.
>
>
>I have required all new subscriptions to be approved, and unsubbed all
>existing remarq subscribers. Of course, as they have not unsubbed from
>remarq, they still have unlimited access to not only the illegally
>collected UL archives, but also the illegally collected address book.
>
>Again, I am requesting that all posts, all records and all mention of
>the Unschooling List please be immediately removed from your site and
>all affiliated sites.
>
>I expect written confirmation of my request by the close of business
>Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2000.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Wentz Since athletes are tested for steroids, should
twentz@mc.net quiz show contestants be tested for Ginko Biloba?
From list-managers-owner Fri Mar 10 10:51:03 2000
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Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 13:59:32 -0500
From: David Shaw
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by remarq
Message-ID: <20000310135932.L5781@akamai.com>
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On Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 07:53:31PM -0600, Tim Wentz wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm new to the list-managers list, but I can tell you what our list
> went through a few weeks ago.
>
> Our list was alerted to remarq's tactics a few weeks ago when one of
> our subscribers found a new message board on remarq that delivered
> the same messages she was getting from our list.
>
> What we found was: whenever anyone subscribes to remarq's "message
> board" for your list, their system sends a subscribe command to your
> list. All of the messages are archived from the moment the first
> remarq subscription comes through and they maintain a subscriber list
> gleaned from the posts.
>
> From the moment we realized what was happening we locked down our
> list, changing the config files to require admin approval of
> subscribe requests so that we could prevent remarq from receiving any
> more posts.
I found a better solution - I stuck them into sendmail's access.db as
"550 Remarq is never welcome here". Along with listtool.com..
Such wonderful companies just itching to make a buck off of someone
elses work...
David
--
David Shaw | dshaw@jabberwocky.com | WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence." - Jeremy S. Anderson
From list-managers-owner Fri Mar 10 12:17:58 2000
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Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 13:44:27 -0600
From: Istvan Berkeley
Organization: Philosophy, The University of Louisiana at Lafayette
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To: Rich Kulawiec , list-managers@greatcircle.com
Subject: Re: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by remarq
References: <20000309075412.A9102@gsp.org>
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Hi there,
It does appear that RemarQ is picking up mailing list traffic and
archiving it. In the case of my list (PHILOSOP) at least, they are doing
this without any authorization.
I talked to the people who know about such things here (our person
registered from the purposes of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act).
Apparently, the appropriate response is to send a registered letter to
their agent for service of process. This is,
Vincent Chow
RemarQ Communities, Inc.
55 South Market Street
Suite 1080,
San Jose, CA 95113
(see http://www.remarq.com/corporate/contact_us.html).
In my letter I politely requested that the cease and desist from their
apparent unapproved archiving activities and notify me of their
compliance, before the end of the month. Apparently, a registered letter
is better than an e-mail as one can get proof of delivery.
It is also interesting to note that many of the subscription requests
that come from these guys fail to specify an e-mail that is usable. That
is to say, my list 'welcome' messages often bounce. As a consequence, I
nuke the subscriptions.
Does anyone know what the deal is with these guys? Do they claim that
their carry unauthorised list content is somehow sanctioned under
Section 107 (fair use)?
All the best,
Istvan
PHILOSOP Moderator
--
Istvan S. N. Berkeley, Ph.D.
Philosophy & Cognitive Science E-mail: istvan@usl.edu
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette
[Formerly, The University of Southwestern Louisiana]
P.O. Box 43770 Tel: +1 318 482-6807
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USA http://www.ucs.usl.edu/~isb9112
From list-managers-owner Sat Mar 11 02:08:45 2000
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To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by remarq
References: <20000309075412.A9102@gsp.org> <20000309140210.A13152@gsp.org>
In-Reply-To: Rich Kulawiec's message of "Thu, 9 Mar 2000 14:02:10 -0500"
From: Russ Allbery
Organization: The Eyrie
Date: 11 Mar 2000 02:07:17 -0800
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Rich Kulawiec writes:
> I have the suspicion that there is some bit of well-known knowledge that
> I'm missing. Several neurons in the back of my brain insist that there
> was some sort of (recent?) to-do over Remarq inserting ads into Usenet
> articles,
As part of an "innovative marketing program," remarQ was adding hyperlinks
to words in the middle of articles as presented on their web view of
Usenet, allowing advertisers to buy particular words and turning those
words into hyperlinks to the advertiser's site. It apparently went quite
a while without being noticed, and then was noticed by several people and
started a number of discussions in various places. Lots of people were
quite irate over advertising practices that implied that they, the authors
of the posts, were endorsing those products.
After a general outcry, remarQ backed down and purged the links from their
web Usenet archives.
I've had some other unrelated previous experience with the web Usenet
folks (not their news outsourcing division, which is apparently largely
separate and seems to have more of a clue). They attempted to sell
Stanford a "Stanford-branded" presentation of Usenet, including in the
sales pitch as evidence of what a good job they were doing the list of
Stanford-related newsgroups they were carrying. Which included the public
"ghosts" of a large number of newsgroups that we no longer distribute
publically and that outside of Stanford contain only spam.
They were quite surprised and shocked when I told them that I considered a
"Stanford-branded" view of Usenet to be unethical and false claim that the
content was provided by Stanford and a possible legal liability problem to
boot.
This seems to fall into the general category of "why bother to create our
own content when we can just steal it from other people and sell it?".
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)
From list-managers-owner Sat Mar 11 06:37:23 2000
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Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 09:45:19 -0500
From: Rich Kulawiec
To: Eric Leach
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: your mail lists on RemarQ
Message-ID: <20000311094518.A9878@gsp.org>
References: <38C7E3ED.8B87CC1A@remarq.com>
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In-Reply-To: <38C7E3ED.8B87CC1A@remarq.com>; from eleach@remarq.com on Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 09:48:30AM -0800
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On Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 09:48:30AM -0800, Eric Leach wrote:
> Rich,
> You have expressed concern about the handling of email lists on RemarQ.
That's putting it mildly. I'm furious with you.
> We would like to assure you that at no time has the control of any list
> left the hands of that list’s owner. By categorizing your list by title
> and subject in our directory, users can discover the presence of your
> list and request membership from you. We merely give them a vehicle to
> view their messages in our threaded discussion interface, once you have
> subscribed them to the list. This is an alternative to viewing messages
> solely in the user's email box with an email client, but functions
> exactly the same:
This is not an acceptable response. Your arrogance is astounding,
even to me, and I've seen a *lot* of arrogance in my time online.
Your actions violate the policies of the lists hosted here, as well
as the compilation copyright which I hold on each. You are directed
to take the following actions immediately:
1. You will remove all references to mailing lists hosted at gsp.org.
This includes subscription information, any and all archives of the
contents of those mailing lists, and any automated scripts or programs
involved in collecting any kind of data from gsp.org.
2. You will ensure that at no time in the future will any mailing
list or other resource hosted at gsp.org be listed at remarq.com
without my express written consent. (I am the owner of this domain;
check the Internic registration records.)
3. You will notify any of your users who have accessed content from
gsp.org via remarq.com, that content from gsp.org has been removed
from your site because you were presenting it without authorization
from gsp.org and in violation of the policies of gsp.org.
You are advised, but not directed to take the following actions:
4. Get a clue. You've already been hammered by the community for
inserting ad links in Usenet articles, and you're about to get
hammered again (you don't think I'm going to keep this to
myself, do you?) for usurping the rights of mailing list owners.
You can either continue to generate ill will toward your site
and your business by taking things that don't belong to you without
permission, or you can choose to ASK FIRST, at which point perhaps
you will find people like me may be a bit more cooperative.
Or not. But that's *our* choice, not yours, and you are
required to respect it. Alternatively, if you persist
in the course of action you have apparently set for yourselves,
you will alienate increasing portions of the Internet community.
---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
rsk@gsp.org
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 01:18:21 2000
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for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 04:05:58 -0500 (EST)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 04:05:58 -0500
From: Tim Pierce
To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Subject: VERPs versus batched delivery
Message-ID: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com>
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John Levine commented recently about the common perception that
VERP-style delivery is a bad thing. I have been dealing with this
perception here as well: I would desperately like to implement VERP
in SmartList, but the managers here are concerned about the effects
on our bandwidth. However, none of us have any hard numbers to
back up our positions, so I did a little research tonight.
Unfortunately, the numbers I got appear to suggest that switching
to VERP deliveries would increase our bandwidth consumption by as
much as 40%. Here's how I arrived at that number, for anyone who
wants to follow along and correct my assumptions.
------------------------------
I chose a thousand lists at random from one of our list servers.
(A more realistic study would have taken the volume of list traffic
into account. That would actually increase the bandwidth consumption
even more, so my numbers may be considered conservative.) For each
of those lists, I counted the total number of addresses subscribed
to the list, and the number of unique domains that those addresses
represent.
Because VERP delivery requires delivering a separate message body
for each recipient, the total number of addresses should be just
about the number of times we transmit a message body over the
network. Batched delivery permits us to deliver a message body
just about once for each unique domain on the list, so I counted
the number of unique domains as approximately the number of times
we deliver a message body using traditional batch methods.
That gives me a way to estimate the bandwidth increase for any
given list: take the difference between the number of VERP deliveries
and the number of batch deliveries, and divide by the number of batch
deliveries to find the percentage by which that number would increase.
So I calculated this percentage for each of the thousand lists, then
added them all together and took the average percentage. The result
was an average volume increase of 40%.
------------------------------
I dream about the benefits that we could get from VERP delivery --
reduced CPU utilization, increased server efficiency, less listowner
confusion, better word-of-mouth, and so on -- but a 40% bandwidth
increase means buying another T1 or more just to cover the extra
deliveries. That's a pretty hard sell no matter what the bennies
are.
I'm interested in hearing from people who have migrated from a
sendmail-based mailing list platform to qmail, Postfix or some
other VERP-style delivery system, and have measured the bandwidth
deltas. Did you in fact find a significant increase in volume,
and if so, how did you handle it? (I am also interested in hearing
from people who can poke holes in my statistical methods, of course.)
--
Regards,
Tim Pierce
RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator
and Chief Hacking Officer
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 03:22:19 2000
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To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
References: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com>
In-Reply-To: Tim Pierce's message of "Mon, 13 Mar 2000 04:05:58 -0500"
From: Russ Allbery
Organization: The Eyrie
Date: 13 Mar 2000 03:27:42 -0800
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Tim Pierce writes:
> Because VERP delivery requires delivering a separate message body for
> each recipient, the total number of addresses should be just about the
> number of times we transmit a message body over the network. Batched
> delivery permits us to deliver a message body just about once for each
> unique domain on the list, so I counted the number of unique domains as
> approximately the number of times we deliver a message body using
> traditional batch methods.
That's ideal batch delivery. I'd be curious how close to ideal batch
delivery you actually arrive in practice. For one thing, you often won't
be able to deliver more than 100 messages for a particular domain at a
time using most standard MTAs since they limit the RCPT count at that
level, and many sites set an even lower limit for spam-control reasons.
If your estimation counted 1,000 AOL addresses as a single delivery, for
example, that may actually be 10 deliveries or more.
Do you have any way of measuring the effective batching rather than the
theoretical maximum batching?
> So I calculated this percentage for each of the thousand lists, then
> added them all together and took the average percentage. The result was
> an average volume increase of 40%.
This number is going to vary somewhat based on your average message size,
since there's a degree of fixed outgoing bandwidth to do the SMTP
negotiation. VERP will increase that somewhat too (longer return path),
but not by 40%. If you send a lot of short messages, this may be
significant (although it's definitely a lesser factor than the
above-mentioned deviations from ideal batch delivery).
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 04:39:51 2000
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From: "Bernie Cosell"
Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 07:39:45 -0500
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Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
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On 13 Mar 2000, at 4:05, Tim Pierce wrote:
Pardon the dumb question [I don't even know what the acronym 'VERP'
stands for, although I understood what you were talking about so perhaps
it didn't matter]:
> Because VERP delivery requires delivering a separate message body
> for each recipient, ...
[...]
> So I calculated this percentage for each of the thousand lists, then
> added them all together and took the average percentage. The result
> was an average volume increase of 40%.
> I dream about the benefits that we could get from VERP delivery --
> reduced CPU utilization, increased server efficiency, less listowner
> confusion, better word-of-mouth, and so on ....
The last two are OK, but I'm not convinced about the first two: in
'normal' delivery, there's just *one* copy of the message and it gets
routed all over hell and gone... is the CPU to make and manage all those
extra copies trivial? even if trivial, how does it end up being
_reduced_ utilization. And doesn't there have to be CPU activity and
server activity behind handling those extra 40% of messages? And -one-
down server will now not result in _one_ message in your queue, but
bunches (implies more overhead/load). And similarly for 'server
efficiency' --- how does making 600 SMTP connetions to mail.aol.com
instead of one result in 'efficiency' -- all of the protocol, ident,
lookups, etc, all have to be done iteratively and for each copy, instead
of just once.
That is, it strikes me as the difference, in usenet terms, between
multiple-newsgroup-posting and crossposting, and few folks have good
'efficiency' things about multiple-posts. So unless I'm really
misunderstanding what VERP is [which is possible, since I'm kind-of
guessing], it would be better for the -users-, it isn't clear right off
that it'll be a win for the _server_ (even beyond the extra net bandwidth
eaten by the extra copies).
/Bernie\
--
Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers
mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA
--> Too many people, too few sheep ; Mon, 13 Mar 2000 06:41:31 -0800 (PST)
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To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
References: <38CC9B41.5272.3CE2056@localhost>
In-Reply-To: "Bernie Cosell"'s message of "Mon, 13 Mar 2000 07:39:45 -0500"
From: Russ Allbery
Organization: The Eyrie
Date: 13 Mar 2000 06:54:02 -0800
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Bernie Cosell writes:
> The last two are OK, but I'm not convinced about the first two: in
> 'normal' delivery, there's just *one* copy of the message and it gets
> routed all over hell and gone... is the CPU to make and manage all those
> extra copies trivial?
Basically, yes. :) Compared to the amount of CPU that it takes to
analyze bounces, figure out what address bounced, etc. it's pretty
trivial. And that analysis doesn't even always work.
> even if trivial, how does it end up being _reduced_ utilization.
Because your bounce handling suddenly becomes trivial, and as a result
your mailing lists get cleaned of bad addresses *much* faster and more
thoroughly than any process that requires human invention (as bounce
handling without VERP does with depressing frequency).
> And doesn't there have to be CPU activity and server activity behind
> handling those extra 40% of messages? And -one- down server will now
> not result in _one_ message in your queue, but bunches (implies more
> overhead/load).
On the other hand, those can be scheduled and retried with more
flexibility, which may even out your load (good in general). This could
go either way.
> And similarly for 'server efficiency' --- how does making 600 SMTP
> connetions to mail.aol.com instead of one result in 'efficiency'
VERP doesn't have to be implemented that way; you can open a single
connection and send all the messages in serial. You can even use
pipelining if the remote server supports it, which would regain part of
the message transmission delay.
> That is, it strikes me as the difference, in usenet terms, between
> multiple-newsgroup-posting and crossposting,
Well, if the SMTP protocol supported return paths that varied by
recipient, one wouldn't have to do it that way. The difference between
this and Usenet multiposting is that one actually gains a very significant
feature from varying return paths, whereas there's really nothing gained
from Usenet multiposting.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 08:52:19 2000
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Mon, 13 Mar 2000 11:59:20 -0500 (EST)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 11:59:20 -0500
From: Tim Pierce
To: Russ Allbery
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
Message-ID: <20000313115920.K14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com>
References: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com>
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On Mon, Mar 13, 2000 at 03:27:42AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Tim Pierce writes:
>
> > ... I counted the number of unique domains as
> > approximately the number of times we deliver a message body using
> > traditional batch methods.
>
> That's ideal batch delivery. I'd be curious how close to ideal batch
> delivery you actually arrive in practice. For one thing, you often won't
> be able to deliver more than 100 messages for a particular domain at a
> time using most standard MTAs since they limit the RCPT count at that
> level, and many sites set an even lower limit for spam-control reasons.
> If your estimation counted 1,000 AOL addresses as a single delivery, for
> example, that may actually be 10 deliveries or more.
>
> Do you have any way of measuring the effective batching rather than the
> theoretical maximum batching?
You raise an excellent point. We don't keep logs of outgoing mail
delivery, for obvious reasons, so there's not much to go on. I could
look at our mail queues and sort of make educated guesses.
I may try turning on outbound mail logging for an hour at a time,
if I can be sure our disk won't melt down, in order to get a better
picture of our delivery performance
--
Regards,
Tim Pierce
RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator
and Chief Hacking Officer
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 10:07:21 2000
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Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 10:16:56 -0800
To: Tim Pierce , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Paul Hoffman / IMC
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
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A thought sparked by a very different discussion about a very different
protocol:
What if the list software did VERPs on one out every hundred messages, or
maybe on only one message a day? Would you then get the list-cleaning
advantages without the costs of doing it on every message?
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 11:22:51 2000
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Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:30:26 -0600 (CST)
From: "David W. Tamkin"
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
In-Reply-To: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> from "Tim Pierce" at Mar 13, 2000 04:05:58 AM
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Tim Pierce wrote,
| I dream about the benefits that we could get from VERP delivery --
| reduced CPU utilization, increased server efficiency, less listowner
| confusion, better word-of-mouth, and so on ...
OK, I'll agree about less listowner confusion, and Russ Allbery has already
explained the reduced CPU utilization and the increased server efficiency in
his response when Bernie Cosell asked, but how do VERPs improve the word-of-
mouth?
If anything, I've seen that as a small downside to VERPs: unsophisticated
members see their own addresses in the return path and panic that they're
being forged. Or sometimes the headers will be corrupted above the RFC822
From: line, so the list member's MUA will see the From: line as part of the
body, ignore it, and try to construct a sender name from the return path,
which will include the recipient's address in the VERP portion, placing it
where even a brand newbie who doesn't know about displaying full headers will
see it; the reaction then is something to witness. (And of course, if it
happens on an unmoderated list, everyone argues "My address was on it!" "No,
you're wrong, mine was!") One public listhost that uses a modification of
ezmlm has tried to reduce the panic factor by using the word "sentto" earlier
in the VERP instead of "errors" as it used to or "return" as some others do.
[Another workaround is to assign a member ID to each subscription and to use
that in the VERP instead of the subscriber's actual address.]
While that's not enough to outweigh the advantages of VERPs, it certainly
does make me wonder why Tim says they improve the word-of-mouth.
Oh, speaking of VERPs, a couple months after my drawing the problem to their
attention, BigMailBox modified its webmail to allow equal signs in outgoing
addresses. Since sites that run it actually direct users to BMB's machines
rather than running copies of the software, the fix took care of all BMB
sites. Before then, as I was saying on this list last fall, users of BMB
sites could not send confirmations to addresses that included equal signs,
and BMB sites could not send NDNs to VERP addresses because of the equal
signs in them.
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 12:52:36 2000
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Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 15:56:11 -0500
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Vince Sabio
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
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** Sometime around 06:54 -0800 03/13/00, Russ Allbery said:
>Bernie Cosell writes:
>
> > The last two are OK, but I'm not convinced about the first two: in
> > 'normal' delivery, there's just *one* copy of the message and it gets
> > routed all over hell and gone... is the CPU to make and manage all those
> > extra copies trivial?
>
>Basically, yes. :) Compared to the amount of CPU that it takes to
>analyze bounces, figure out what address bounced, etc. it's pretty
>trivial. And that analysis doesn't even always work.
>
> > even if trivial, how does it end up being _reduced_ utilization.
>
>Because your bounce handling suddenly becomes trivial, and as a result
>your mailing lists get cleaned of bad addresses *much* faster and more
>thoroughly than any process that requires human invention (as bounce
>handling without VERP does with depressing frequency).
SmartBounce has better than 97% bounce recognition without using VERP
(though it optionally supports VERP as well), so the human
intervention is pretty minimal -- and in many of those cases, there's
nothing for even a human to go on.
However, like all automated processes, it _does_ require a certain
amount of CPU and I/O ("The Killer"(tm)) for processing.
__________________________________________________________________________
Vince Sabio Got Bounces?
vince@vjs.org Got Jokes?
Got Spam?
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 13:08:03 2000
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To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: "Roger Fajman"
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:05:54 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
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> What if the list software did VERPs on one out every hundred messages, or
> maybe on only one message a day? Would you then get the list-cleaning
> advantages without the costs of doing it on every message?
That's the way that LISTSERV does it. It works well. The percentage of
VERPs can be specified by the list owner.
LISTSERV also limits the VERPs (it calls them probes) to one post be day,
rather than doing them on every post.
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 13:43:16 2000
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To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
In-reply-to: <20000313040558.J14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:44:39 -0800
From: Michelle Dick
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Tim wrote:
> I dream about the benefits that we could get from VERP delivery --
> reduced CPU utilization, increased server efficiency, less listowner
> confusion, better word-of-mouth, and so on -- but a 40% bandwidth
> increase means buying another T1 or more just to cover the extra
> deliveries. That's a pretty hard sell no matter what the bennies
> are.
I agree. I like the VERP solution too. However, I'm in even a worse
situation than you: the small scale situation. My lists run over a
modem line and are sent to a smarthost that can handle large numbers
of addressees at a time (though I believe I limit it to 500) -- every
addressee gets sent to the same host. So, the bandwidth increase I'd
see would be over several hundred thousand percent increase.
I'm in a non-DSL-able location, and other solutions are not cost
effective at this time. My bounce handler works over 90% of the time
(and it's been over a year since I've had one it missed that I
couldn't figure out on my own in less than a minute), so not changing
is a no-brainer. CPU capacity is cheap, cheap, cheap compared to
bandwidth in my situation. The $500 computer I bought last year for
my own use is twice as powerful as the one that runs the list with
load to spare.
--
Michelle Dick artemis@rahul.net East Palo Alto, CA
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 14:13:08 2000
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Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 20:52:44 -0500
To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
From: Kirez Korgan
Subject: moderating a list with a cgi form
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Greetings,
I'm hoping to use a form & formmail.pl to moderate one of my lists from a
web site. This will enable me to allow a team of several people to stop at
the web site and moderate the list whenever they have time --- viewing
emails that are in the queue, then copy&pasting them into a form, and
submitting them directly to the list, with the headers appropriately
doctored for a moderated Majordomo 1.94 list.
I'm wondering if anyone knows whether the form can be manipulated so that
it will submit a clean, properly formatted email. The body of the email
needs to begin with the headers, as follows:
approved: PASSWORD
to: objectivism@wetheliving.com
from: Arthur D'Poste
Subject: I love my email list community
Blah blah blah blah blah.
********************************************************
...So the challenge is to get the form properly formatted. I've got the
system set up to allow this moderation at http://wetheliving.com/owlmod --
I use MHonArc to archive my lists. The posts that are submitted to the list
appear in the 'queue' in the top left frame, the form for submitting the
posts is below it in the bottom left frame, and the 'output' to the
moderated list appears in the right half frame. The frames can be resized
to make it easier to deal with.
Can a form submission have such a tailored format.... dispensing with the
usual "The results of a form submission are as follows..." etc?
Anyone with an answer or solution to this?
cheers,
Kirez
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 14:27:58 2000
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Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 14:05:04 -0500
From: David Shaw
To: Rich Kulawiec
Cc: webmaster@remarq.com, postmaster@remarq.com, hostmaster@remarq.com,
list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, Q_1003865_waterdog@lists.remarq.com
Subject: Re: Unauthorized archiving and presentation of mailing list by remarq
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On Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 07:54:12AM -0500, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
> List-managers:
>
> You might want to drop by www.remarq.com and see if your mailing lists
> are included there as well; use the search box on their home page.
Hell, I've had dozens of Remarq-ified users try and subscribe to one
of my lists over the past few weeks. Inevitably, the addresses would
all bounce with obscure NNTP (yes, NNTP (Usenet)!) errors after a day
or so. At any point I would have more Remarq users in the "bounce"
file than in the actual list file.
I figured they were just hopelessly incompetent, and I could ignore
them. Now that I see they are capturing addresses off of a private
list, they become The Enemy, and I've blackholed their entire site.
Life is too short to waste time negotiating with losers like them.
David
--
David Shaw | dshaw@jabberwocky.com | WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence." - Jeremy S. Anderson
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 14:43:52 2000
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Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 14:38:05 -0800
To: "Roger Fajman" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
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At 4:05 PM -0500 3/13/2000, Roger Fajman wrote:
> > What if the list software did VERPs on one out every hundred messages, or
>> maybe on only one message a day? Would you then get the list-cleaning
>> advantages without the costs of doing it on every message?
>
>That's the way that LISTSERV does it. It works well. The percentage of
>VERPs can be specified by the list owner.
This ignores some of the other advantages of VERPing -- for instance,
you can start customizing messages to make things better for the
users. For instance, putting the user's address back in the To: line,
encoding unsubscribe info into your unsubscribe links, that sort of
thing. it can REALLY cut the % of user problems and raise user
satisfaction a lot. And really cut the admin hassles as well....
VERPing technology can buy you lots beyond simply making bounces
easier, if you want.
--
--
Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com)
And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar
and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'"
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 15:39:04 2000
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Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 18:15:59 -0500
To: Paul Hoffman / IMC
From: Nick Simicich
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
Cc: Tim Pierce , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
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At 10:16 AM 3/13/00 -0800, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:
>A thought sparked by a very different discussion about a very different
>protocol:
>
>What if the list software did VERPs on one out every hundred messages, or
>maybe on only one message a day? Would you then get the list-cleaning
>advantages without the costs of doing it on every message?
I solved this problem in a vey simple way. The bounce software sets a flag
when it gets a bounce it can't fend. The delivery software then verps and
resets the flag.
No unparsable bounces, no verps. An unparsable bounce? One verp.
--
That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.
That which does kill us makes us smell stronger, after a few days, anyway.
Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com
http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World!
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 16:22:34 2000
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Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 18:25:44 -0600
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: mark david mcCreary
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
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>Unfortunately, the numbers I got appear to suggest that switching
>to VERP deliveries would increase our bandwidth consumption by as
>much as 40%. Here's how I arrived at that number, for anyone who
>wants to follow along and correct my assumptions.
>
Tim
I would think that your labor costs savings would be able to offset any
increase in bandwidth costs when using VERP. That is, we have a part-time
person to help subscribers that are having problems, and the vast majority
of those problems are people having trouble getting unsubscribed.
If we were not using VERP single delivery, that would most likely be a full
time job. That's because with the traditional BCC method, the subscriber
never sees any clue as to which email address they are subscribed under.
We put in the subscribers email address in the To: line of all announcement
lists whenever we are doing VERP. I have seen other lists drop in the
email address at the bottom of messages too, and both might be advisable.
As long as you are sending a unique message anyway, why not ?
We use Exim as our MTA, which has the ability to do VERP, as well as
manipulate headers so that we can put the receipents email address in the
To: line. We use VERP on all our small and or in-frequent lists. For our
bigger lists, we use the traditional mailing list method for all the large
domains, and VERP single delivery for the rest of the list. With AOL for
example, I don't think VERP helps that much, since AOL handles bounces ok,
and the email ends up in the mailbox for the "screen name" that the person
is using, so they are rarely confused as to which address of theirs is on
our list.
And with the rapidly falling price of bandwidth, I expect we will be using
VERP single delivery on every single piece of email. Both for the easy
handling of bounces, and eliminating the confusion of which email address
is on the list,from the subscribers point of view.
That's my 2 cents :-)
mark
mail-list.com franchise
toolsmiths, language lawyers, and quality assurance people needed
http://www.mail-list.com/franchise
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 16:42:42 2000
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Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:36:54 -0500
From: Tim Pierce
To: "David W. Tamkin"
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
Message-ID: <20000313193654.U14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com>
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On Mon, Mar 13, 2000 at 01:30:26PM -0600, David W. Tamkin wrote:
> Tim Pierce wrote,
>
> | I dream about the benefits that we could get from VERP delivery --
> | reduced CPU utilization, increased server efficiency, less listowner
> | confusion, better word-of-mouth, and so on ...
>
> OK, I'll agree about less listowner confusion, and Russ Allbery has already
> explained the reduced CPU utilization and the increased server efficiency in
> his response when Bernie Cosell asked, but how do VERPs improve the word-of-
> mouth?
I would expect VERP-based delivery to be a big draw to potential
list administrators. List managers are always exchanging gossip
about which sites make it easiest to run a mailing list, and handling
bounces are the biggest headache by far that the typical list admin
has to deal with. Eliminating that hassle would be a feather in our
cap for other list managers.
--
Regards,
Tim Pierce
RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator
and Chief Hacking Officer
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 16:57:16 2000
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Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:19:33 -0500
To: "Bernie Cosell" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: John Levine
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
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>The last two are OK, but I'm not convinced about the first two: in
>'normal' delivery, there's just *one* copy of the message and it gets
>routed all over hell and gone... is the CPU to make and manage all those
>extra copies trivial? even if trivial, how does it end up being
>_reduced_ utilization.
Pragmatically, qmail does single deliveries with VERP, and it's a lot faster
than sendmail. I don't know how much is the simpler design due to single
deliveries, and how much is not having decades of historical cruft glommed
into one giant program, but it hardly matters in practice.
| That is, it strikes me as the difference, in usenet terms, between
>multiple-newsgroup-posting and crossposting,
Not really. The crucial difference is that it's useful to customize e-mail
to individual recipients. VERP puts a custom envelope return address on each
recipient's message, which permits almost completely automated bounce
handling. This does work, I've used it for ages on lists I run, and it
avoids vast amounts of manual effort on the part of the list admin.
Once you send separate copies per recipient, you can also usefully customize
the message body. In the tag at the bottoms of the message, you can put the
address to which it was sent, useful to track down bounces from systems that
bounce back messages while removing all trace of the original envelope. You
can also add "To unsubscribe, send a message to
" (substituting
the actual address for user and domain.com) so that users, even whose
addresses have changed since they subscribed, can easily get off the list.
Dan Bernstein has pointed out in his usual annoying but accurate way that
SMTP wasn't designed to be particularly efficient in bandwidth usage, and if
that's what you're worried about, there are a lot of ways other than
multiple deliveries to reduce bandwidth. The most effective is sublists like
LISTSERV uses -- distribute the list database to hosts close to the
recipients, then send one copy with one address from the master host to the
subhosts that then redeliver.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 17:52:37 2000
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Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 17:56:11 -0800
To: Tim Pierce , "David W. Tamkin"
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
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At 7:36 PM -0500 3/13/2000, Tim Pierce wrote:
>I would expect VERP-based delivery to be a big draw to potential
>list administrators. List managers are always exchanging gossip
>about which sites make it easiest to run a mailing list, and handling
>bounces are the biggest headache by far that the typical list admin
>has to deal with. Eliminating that hassle would be a feather in our
>cap for other list managers.
>
I tend to agree. I know that after buying Smartbounce, after looking
at self-implementation and doign ti by hand and all sorts of other
options, that SmartBounce paid for itself within two weeks, purely in
the reduced man-hours it saved at my billable rate. I haven't (yet)
started taking advantage of it's "unsubscribe" processing, but I hope
to do that soon, too, to try to pre-process the postmaster mail, and
grab another chunk.
(today, for instance, I ran smartbounce, and it found and
unsubscribed a bit over 50,000 bounces for me on my lists. Do you
really want to guess what it'd take for me to do that by hand?
shudder. And it did it in about four hours, while I was off doing
something else entirely...)
--
--
Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com)
And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar
and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'"
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 18:39:00 2000
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To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
In-reply-to: <4.2.0.58.20000313182851.009bd570@mail.iecc.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 18:46:48 -0800
From: Michelle Dick
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John Levine wrote:
> recipient's message, which permits almost completely automated bounce
> handling. This does work, I've used it for ages on lists I run, and it
> avoids vast amounts of manual effort on the part of the list admin.
FWIW, I don't find myself spending "vast amounts" of time processing
bounces the non-verp bounce handler doesn't catch these days. Of
course, although I manage several lists, only one is big enough to be
concerned about, and then many would consider even it tiny at around
2,000 subscribers. Bounces must have been getting better, because I'd
estimate I spend about 30 seconds every 5 days or so figuring out a
bounce that my doctored-up smartlist program couldn't handle. Of
course, I wouldn't want to do totally without bounce handling, verp or
non-verp. Heck, that's why I adopted smartlist so many years ago.
It did use to be more time, which is why I think bounces have gotten better.
The main reason I'd like to use verp is NOT because of those few
remaining bounces, but so that I can include an active html link in
the messages so that folks can unsubscribe themselves more easily or
do other tasks just with a click.
I DO spend about 10 minutes a week either mailing out various
administrivia instructions.
--
Michelle Dick artemis@rahul.net East Palo Alto, CA
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 19:37:43 2000
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To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
References: <20000313214440.1AFC199E51@waltz.rahul.net>
In-Reply-To: Michelle Dick's message of "Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:44:39 -0800"
From: Russ Allbery
Organization: The Eyrie
Date: 13 Mar 2000 19:42:11 -0800
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Michelle Dick writes:
> I agree. I like the VERP solution too. However, I'm in even a worse
> situation than you: the small scale situation. My lists run over a
> modem line and are sent to a smarthost that can handle large numbers of
> addressees at a time (though I believe I limit it to 500) -- every
> addressee gets sent to the same host. So, the bandwidth increase I'd
> see would be over several hundred thousand percent increase.
Do you have any control at all over your smarthost? If so, you might be
able to get *it* to do VERP for you.
> I'm in a non-DSL-able location, and other solutions are not cost
> effective at this time. My bounce handler works over 90% of the time
> (and it's been over a year since I've had one it missed that I couldn't
> figure out on my own in less than a minute), so not changing is a
> no-brainer.
Oh, agreed. If your bounce handler is already working well for you,
there's no real reason to change it. And the number of truly annoying
bounces seems to have gone down recently. (I think there are also fewer
people who have complicated forwarding paths for their mail.)
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 13 21:36:23 2000
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To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: "Roger Fajman"
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 00:31:21 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
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> If anything, I've seen that as a small downside to VERPs: unsophisticated
> members see their own addresses in the return path and panic that they're
> being forged. Or sometimes the headers will be corrupted above the RFC822
> From: line, so the list member's MUA will see the From: line as part of the
> body, ignore it, and try to construct a sender name from the return path,
> which will include the recipient's address in the VERP portion, placing it
> where even a brand newbie who doesn't know about displaying full headers will
> see it; the reaction then is something to witness. (And of course, if it
> happens on an unmoderated list, everyone argues "My address was on it!" "No,
> you're wrong, mine was!") One public listhost that uses a modification of
> ezmlm has tried to reduce the panic factor by using the word "sentto" earlier
> in the VERP instead of "errors" as it used to or "return" as some others do.
> [Another workaround is to assign a member ID to each subscription and to use
> that in the VERP instead of the subscriber's actual address.]
We've run into a mail system used by a number of subscribers to some of
our lists that bounces messages that have the VERP-type return path used
by LISTSERV. I'm not sure whether it's the overall length of the userid
or the asterisks in the userid that it objects to.
From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 14 07:51:38 2000
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Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
To: twp@rootsweb.com (Tim Pierce)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 09:51:55 -0600 (CST)
From: "David W. Tamkin"
Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com
In-Reply-To: <20000313193654.U14159@ma-1.rootsweb.com> from "Tim Pierce" at Mar 13, 2000 07:36:54 PM
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I asked Tim Pierce,
T> ... but how do VERPs improve the word-of- mouth?
He replied,
P> I would expect VERP-based delivery to be a big draw to potential
P> list administrators. List managers are always exchanging gossip
P> about which sites make it easiest to run a mailing list ...
Ah, you were talking about the word-of-mouth from listowner to listowner
about a list host, not about that from list subscriber to list subscriber
about a list.
Thanks for explaining.
From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 14 08:06:50 2000
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Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
To: RAF@CU.NIH.GOV (Roger Fajman)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 10:07:00 -0600 (CST)
From: "David W. Tamkin"
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
In-Reply-To: <200003140521.VAA10221@honor.greatcircle.com> from "Roger Fajman" at Mar 14, 2000 12:31:21 AM
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Roger Fajman wrote,
| We've run into a mail system used by a number of subscribers to some of
| our lists that bounces messages that have the VERP-type return path used
| by LISTSERV. I'm not sure whether it's the overall length of the userid
| or the asterisks in the userid that it objects to.
Replacing the asterisks and the elements of the subscriber's address in the
return path with an alphanumeric subscriber ID would get rid of the unex-
pected characters and also decrease the length.
It would also reduce the panicking when an MUA presents a post with no From:
header (or whose From: header has been disconnected into the body) to the sub-
scriber as coming from listname-owner-articleID-your=address.here@list.host.
Maybe in extreme cases it's not so far out an idea.
From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 14 11:21:20 2000
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Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 14:24:50 -0500
From: James M Galvin
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
In-reply-to: "13 Mar 2000 04:05:58 EST."
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Reply-to: James M Galvin
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This whole discussion of VERP versus batched for better bounce
processing seems to have overlooked an arguably preferable solution:
MTAs should return the Internet standard delivery status notification
message.
This has, in fact, been occurring. I've seen a dramatic increase in the
last 6 months in the use of the standard DSN. I don't have any hard
numbers although I can say that my hit rate for fully processing bounce
messages has inched to 85% from 80%, for those elists that are a
problem. What that means is the larger an elist gets or the lower the
frequency of messages, the more problematic managing the bounces
becomes. I divide my elists into two broad categories: those for which
the bounce processing is 100% for all practical purposes and those for
which I just can not get ahead.
By the way, I have trouble believing that SmartBounce gets 97% because I
see a new error message at least once a week, but then such statistics
are based on your subscriber community so anything is possible.
Overall, my community is worldwide and quite varied. Heck, I get error
messages in foreign languages almost every day, which result in frequent
updates to my parsing routines.
In fairness, I do have to admit I've been thinking a lot about VERP
distribution, for all the reasons already discussed. Even now I have
too many to think about failed messages that come back with no
indication or an ambiguous indication as to which address failed. It is
a personnel drain to deal with them, although lately we discovered that
letting them fail and keeping good records counts for a lot. We've been
getting lucky lately getting similar failures across multiple elists,
and the intersection can be quite revealing.
Jim
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--
James M. Galvin, Ph.D. Principal
eList eXpress LLC +1 410.549.4619
607 Trixsam Road +1 561.619.2450 FAX
Sykesville, MD 21784 http://www.elistx.com
Delivering your email, your way.
There are only two ways to live your life; one as though nothing is a
miracle. The other is as though everything is. - Albert Einstein
------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0--
From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 14 13:51:10 2000
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Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 13:58:52 -0800
To: James M Galvin , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
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At 2:24 PM -0500 3/14/2000, James M Galvin wrote:
>
>By the way, I have trouble believing that SmartBounce gets 97% because I
>see a new error message at least once a week, but then such statistics
>are based on your subscriber community so anything is possible.
I'd say it does -- I've got one of the most diverse groups of
addresses out there, especially internationally, and the only places
Smartbounce has problems are things where *I*, manually can't figure
out what the subscribed address is, and international sites that
translate their error messages.... I can get 200 megabytes of bounce
mail out of a mailing without working hard, and SmartBounce will
leave me 1-2 megabytes that needs manual looking at. I can't argue
with that.
--
--
Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com)
And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar
and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'"
From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 14 14:06:10 2000
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Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 14:08:57 -0800
From: Dave Reinhardt
Subject: install MJ?
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
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If this is the wrong list for this question please tell me.
can you tell me how to get this info off the server?
# You need to have or create a user and group which majordomo will run as.
# Enter the numeric UID and GID (not their names!) here:
W_USER = 55515
W_GROUP = 55515
I have a user majordom that has email access and its dir is
/usr/local/majordomo
ther is also a dir usr/local/majordomo-1.94.4
there seems to be a user called daemon Owner of many system processes /
thanks dave
From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 02:06:17 2000
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Message-ID: <38CF613A.3EEA5948@csi.uned.es>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 11:08:58 +0100
From: Manuel Nogales Casares
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Hello:
I'm new in this list. my question is :
Is there any weblist to manage majordomo? I have webmin and esquire, but
I want that users can creates their mailing list, and users can only
manage their list.
PD: weblist :--> software to mange majordomo by web
--
,.........................................,.........................,
: Manuel Nogales Casares Email: mnogales@csi.uned.es :
: Técnico Comunicaciones CSI-UNED : Tel: (+34) 91-398-6634 :
: Universidad N. de Educacion a Distancia : Fax: (+34) 91-398-7667 :
: Senda del Rey, s/n. : :
: E-28040 Madrid SPAIN : Linux User 140.716 :
'.........................................:.........................'
From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 06:53:46 2000
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Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 10:09:47 -0500 (EST)
To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Subject: virtual domains
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I have been struggling with setting up majordomo to handle lists comming
to multiple domains, I think it has something to do with problems in my
/etc/aliases file, or a sendmail configuration
if anyone on this list knows of a good, concise resource for configuring
virtual domains with majordomo and covers some of sendmail, i would
appreciate it
thanks
/aaron
From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 07:36:33 2000
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To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
From: Alistair Formby
Subject: Use of a database with list server software
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Dear list,
I have been looking for a solution to my problem for quite a while now and I haven't come up with an adequate one. I have looked at several large and expensive solutions like ListServ and other smaller players like majordomo to handle the job for me.
So far I have come to the conclusion that majordomo may be my best bet as I currently use majordomo and am familiar with Perl. I also like the idea of using PHP to dynamically drive the front end.
Does anyone know of a feasible alternative my problem?
Alistair Formby, aformby@openworld.co.uk
P.S.
I have noticed the recent spate of conversations about 'VERP versus batched delivery'. I find that there are so many subscribers that try to unsubscribe from e-mail accounts that have been 'forwarded to' from another account. It makes the unsubscription process that much easier when sending mails out one by one, due to the fact that when sending batch deliveries I cannot make the 'To' header the subscribers e-mail address. I typically see a 50% increase in bandswidth usage when sending using VERP (not too sure what the acronym VERP stands for though).
From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 11:36:14 2000
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To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
References: <0FRF00BHXFDRQE@eListX.com>
In-Reply-To: James M Galvin's message of "Tue, 14 Mar 2000 14:24:50 -0500"
From: Russ Allbery
Organization: The Eyrie
Date: 15 Mar 2000 11:12:39 -0800
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James M Galvin writes:
> This whole discussion of VERP versus batched for better bounce
> processing seems to have overlooked an arguably preferable solution:
> MTAs should return the Internet standard delivery status notification
> message.
I think it's more that we're all aware that standardized bounce messages
would improve everyone's life a lot, but there isn't much we all can do
towards that end and we pretty much have to play the hand that we're
dealt. And some companies are quite fond of proprietary mail systems that
have no concept whatsoever of what a DSN is.
(DSN I think would also have caught on quicker if it were about a tenth of
the complexity that it is. As it stands, it's a good example of a
second-system protocol designed by a committee. :/)
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)
From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 11:51:14 2000
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Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 14:56:24 -0800
From: Joe Smith
To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Subject: Re: VERPs versus batched delivery
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On Mon, Mar 13, 2000 at 04:05:58AM -0500, Tim Pierce wrote:
> So I calculated this percentage for each of the thousand lists, then
> added them all together and took the average percentage. The result
> was an average volume increase of 40%.
Have you considered doing both? (Batch with an occasional VERP)
Do normal delivery in batched mode. But every so often (such as once
a week), set a flag on the list so that the next message to that particular
list goes out with VERP enabled. Do this on different days for different
lists.
Bad addresses may hang around for 7 days before the next VERP run, but
they will get caught eventually.
--
Joe Smith MCI WorldCom, On-Net Design/Impl, Product Technical Support
UNIX and Tech Sup: TYMNET Network, Xstream Packet Services (Public X.25)
2560 N 1st St, MS-5046/746, San Jose, CA 95131
Voice: 408-533-6220 = vnet 854-6220 Fax: 408-533-6702 = vnet 854-6702
From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 12:06:11 2000
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Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 15:39:11 -0800
From: "Michael C. Berch"
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CC: Dave Reinhardt
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As always, just a reminder that Majordomo-specific querstions should be
posted to the Majordomo-Users list (majordomo-users@greatcircle.com)
rather than to List-Managers. To post to Majordomo-Users, first
subscribe to the list (you'll probably find it very useful if you are a
Majordomo site manager or mailing list owner) by sending the command
subscribe majordomo-users
to majordomo@greatcircle.com . Then you can post your question to
majordomo-users@greatcircle.com and you will get a much larger technical
audience for installation and operational questions, as well as not
burdening the List-Managers membership (many of whom do not use
Majordomo) with technical questions. List-Managers is focused more on
policy and overall platform issues rather than MLM-specific technical issues.
Thanks,
--
Michael C. Berch
list-managers list manager
majordomo-users list manager
mcb@greatcircle.com / mcb@postmodern.com
Dave Reinhardt wrote:
>
> If this is the wrong list for this question please tell me.
>
> can you tell me how to get this info off the server?
> # You need to have or create a user and group which majordomo will run as.
> # Enter the numeric UID and GID (not their names!) here:
> W_USER = 55515
> W_GROUP = 55515
> I have a user majordom that has email access and its dir is
> /usr/local/majordomo
> ther is also a dir usr/local/majordomo-1.94.4
> there seems to be a user called daemon Owner of many system processes /
> thanks dave
From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 12:54:48 2000
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for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 16:00:44 -0500 (EST)
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 15:58:00 -0500
From: James M Galvin
Subject: DSNs are complex
In-reply-to: "15 Mar 2000 11:12:39 PST."
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Reply-to: James M Galvin
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From Russ Allbery:
(DSN I think would also have caught on quicker if it were about a tenth of
the complexity that it is. As it stands, it's a good example of a
second-system protocol designed by a committee. :/)
Now you've got me curious. Can you describe what is complex about it?
The only real issue I have with it is that I can not find everything I
need in one place. There are a few companion documents and I find it
clumsy to track down details when I need them.
And some companies are quite fond of proprietary mail systems that
have no concept whatsoever of what a DSN is.
The really sad part is that there are two, maybe three companies, that
have most of the market share in this space. If even one of them would
"do it right" it would probably change "the world".
And then there is Sendmail....
Jim
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--
James M. Galvin, Ph.D. Principal
eList eXpress LLC +1 410.549.4619
607 Trixsam Road +1 561.619.2450 FAX
Sykesville, MD 21784 http://www.elistx.com
Delivering your email, your way.
There are only two ways to live your life; one as though nothing is a
miracle. The other is as though everything is. - Albert Einstein
------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0--
From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 14:08:17 2000
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From: Alvin Oga
Message-Id: <200003152214.OAA04936@planet.fef.com>
Subject: Re: virtual domains
To: steelea2@pop.mccte.educ.msu.edu
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 14:14:29 -0800 (PST)
Cc: alvin@planet.fef.com (Alvin Oga), list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
In-Reply-To: from "steelea2@pop.mccte.educ.msu.edu" at Mar 15, 2000 10:09:47 AM
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hi aaron...
i have a virtual domain mini-howto... ( sorta obsolete )
but the majordomo section should work for oyu...
i've not collected new sites of this stuff in a while..
please let me know if oyu know of other sites/references...
thanx
alvin
http://www.linux-consulting.com/FAQ_Virtual
> steelea2@pop.mccte.educ.msu.edu wrote:
>
> I have been struggling with setting up majordomo to handle lists comming
> to multiple domains, I think it has something to do with problems in my
> /etc/aliases file, or a sendmail configuration
> if anyone on this list knows of a good, concise resource for configuring
> virtual domains with majordomo and covers some of sendmail, i would
> appreciate it
> thanks
> /aaron
>
From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 14:53:25 2000
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To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: DSNs are complex
References: <0FRH00113ED7RH@eListX.com>
In-Reply-To: James M Galvin's message of "Wed, 15 Mar 2000 15:58:00 -0500"
From: Russ Allbery
Organization: The Eyrie
Date: 15 Mar 2000 14:59:47 -0800
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James M Galvin writes:
> Now you've got me curious. Can you describe what is complex about it?
windlord:~/work/rfc> wc -l rfc1894.txt
2187 rfc1894.txt
2,000 lines is complex. :) It's also fairly difficult to read. I've
helped implement a bounce system, the one currently used by Stanford
University for all invalid @stanford.edu addresses in fact, which I
believe to be fully compliant with RFC 2187, and the RFC was a pain to
follow.
It also requires at least reference to RFC 1893 for the status codes,
which is another 800 lines or so.
It requires both full-blown MIME parsing and full-blown header parsing
(which is probably reasonable these days, but certainly has slowed its
adoption -- MIME parsing has only in the past year or two really become
something I would want to rely on).
It doesn't just handle bounces; it also handles delivery notifications.
While I appreciate the advantages of generalizing a protocol, delivery
notifications are, at least in my opinion, a solution looking for a
problem, and their addition to the DSN standard definitely made it much
more complicated than it would have needed to be without them.
It sets up *three* new IANA registries, which thankfully you can mostly
ignore because you rarely need to use anything other than one or two
values for those fields. But that means yet more canonical data sources
to refer to when you try to parse the things.
Basically, there is a whole bunch of additional cruft that it accumulates
due to its desire to be able to handle all sorts of delivery notifications
(not just bounces, which are the real problem that needed solving) through
all sorts of very bizarre gatewaying situations that are only rarely
encountered in the wild. While I am sure that some of this would come in
handy if you ran one of those weird gateways, I'm inclined to think that a
protocol that would simplify a bit better for the 99% case would be
superior.
> The only real issue I have with it is that I can not find everything I
> need in one place. There are a few companion documents and I find it
> clumsy to track down details when I need them.
Yup, that's a big one.
> And then there is Sendmail....
sendmail actually isn't the MTA I would complain about in this space. If
you really want a standardized bounce format, the MTA that you're never
going to be able to get to join the fold is likely qmail, because Dan
Bernstein took one look at DSN and said "no way in hell."
Frankly, I'm sympathetic. I think it's an ugly protocol, and qmail's
bounce format at least has the significant advantages of simplicity and
clarity. I guess one of the points where I differ with Dan is that I'm
willing to implement an inferior protocol if it helps things work
together; software exists to hide complexity, and now that I've written a
DSN bounce generator, I can always just reuse that one and not worry about
how annoying the syntax is.
But in an ideal world....
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)
From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 15 15:51:13 2000
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Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 15:55:56 -0800
From: Dave Reinhardt
Subject: newbie question
To: Majordomo ListMgrs
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I am new to list management.
I do not even have one up yet.
I am looking for a list manager that will use a text file for source of
eMail addresses. Is ther one or do they all do this?
Thank You
Dave
From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 16 00:21:13 2000
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To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Use of a database with list server software
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 15 Mar 2000 15:41:18 GMT."
<4.2.2.20000315145516.065831b0@post.openworld.co.uk>
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From: Olivier Salaun - CRU
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Alistair Formby wrote :
> I have been looking for a solution to my problem for quite a while now and
> I haven't come up with an adequate one. I have looked at several large
> and expensive solutions like ListServ and other smaller players like
> majordomo to handle the job for me.
Sympa relies on a DBMS to manage lists' subscribers. It uses Perl DBI
standardized API and therefore may work with as different DBMS as MySQL,
PostgreSQL, Oracle or Sybase.
> So far I have come to the conclusion that majordomo may be my best bet as
> I currently use majordomo and am familiar with Perl. I also like the idea
> of using PHP to dynamically drive the front end.
The front-end is written in Perl to benefit from sympa's API ; use of FastCGI
provides good performences. We use our home-made templates to separate the
code from presentation.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Olivier Salaun Sympa: http://listes.cru.fr/sympa/
Comite Reseaux des Universites
France
From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 16 01:36:26 2000
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Thu, 16 Mar 2000 04:26:49 -0500 (EST)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 04:26:49 -0500
From: Tim Pierce
To: Russ Allbery
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: DSNs are complex
Message-ID: <20000316042649.P48716@ma-1.rootsweb.com>
References: <0FRH00113ED7RH@eListX.com>
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On Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 02:59:47PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
>
> It requires both full-blown MIME parsing and full-blown header parsing
> (which is probably reasonable these days, but certainly has slowed its
> adoption -- MIME parsing has only in the past year or two really become
> something I would want to rely on).
I was a little shocked to find that no one seems to have yet written
a general-purpose MIME parsing library in C. Having one would
probably encourage more MIME awareness in other tools.
In the absence of anything else, I wrote a program to parse enough
MIME to extract the text/plain portion from multipart/mixed bodies,
but it would definitely be useful to expand this to an all-singing-
all-dancing MIME manipulation tool. I just can't figure out what
the API should look like. (Maybe that's why no one else has done it.)
--
Regards,
Tim Pierce
RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator
and Chief Hacking Officer
From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 16 07:06:16 2000
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Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:09:42 -0500
From: James M Galvin
Subject: Re: DSNs are complex
In-reply-to: "15 Mar 2000 14:59:47 PST."
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Reply-to: James M Galvin
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From Russ Allbery:
Basically, there is a whole bunch of additional cruft that it accumulates
due to its desire to be able to handle all sorts of delivery notifications
(not just bounces, which are the real problem that needed solving) through
all sorts of very bizarre gatewaying situations that are only rarely
encountered in the wild. While I am sure that some of this would come in
handy if you ran one of those weird gateways, I'm inclined to think that a
protocol that would simplify a bit better for the 99% case would be
superior.
Speaking of bizarre gatewaying situations, I'm disappointed by the
number of software packages that get DSNs wrong. I've got a parser for
DSNs and I've got 10 or so special cases that I have to check for.
Okay, so I agree with you, it is unnecessarily complex; why else would
people get it wrong.
> And then there is Sendmail....
sendmail actually isn't the MTA I would complain about in this space. If
you really want a standardized bounce format, the MTA that you're never
going to be able to get to join the fold is likely qmail, because Dan
Bernstein took one look at DSN and said "no way in hell."
What I meant by Sendmail is that it's really in a class of its own. As
freeware it's the premiere example of, "why should I update since I'm
not having any problems?" Bind is another good example. There will be
old out-of-date versions for a very long time to come.
As far as qmail and Dan Bernstein are considered, sometimes saying
nothing is the most you can say.
Jim
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--
James M. Galvin, Ph.D. Principal
eList eXpress LLC +1 410.549.4619
607 Trixsam Road +1 561.619.2450 FAX
Sykesville, MD 21784 http://www.elistx.com
Delivering your email, your way.
There are only two ways to live your life; one as though nothing is a
miracle. The other is as though everything is. - Albert Einstein
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From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 16 09:02:21 2000
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To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: DSNs are complex
References: <0FRI001CESWURH@eListX.com>
In-Reply-To: James M Galvin's message of "Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:09:42 -0500"
From: Russ Allbery
Organization: The Eyrie
Date: 16 Mar 2000 08:51:33 -0800
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James M Galvin writes:
> As far as qmail and Dan Bernstein are considered, sometimes saying
> nothing is the most you can say.
qmail runs our DSN-compliant bounce generator quite well, with nice rate
limiting and throttling under load. :)
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)
From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 16 21:07:34 2000
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Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 21:18:49 -0800
To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: sendmail 8.10
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anyone played with it yet? If so, what do you think?
--
--
Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com)
And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar
and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'"
From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 21 11:51:31 2000
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Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 11:55:15 -0800
From: Eric Leach
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To: list-managers-digest@greatcircle.com
Subject: Mail Lists on RemarQ
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Hello. As you already know, we have incorporated support for mail lists
through our web site at http://www.remarq.com/ . Up until now we have
been addressing the concerns of list owners on an as needed basis. We
would like to address list owner's concerns in a centralized forum, so I
am posting this here.
This message covers the functionality of mail lists on RemarQ in 4
sections: 1) Background on RemarQ and our current approach to Usenet
newsgroups and custom groups, 2) Approach to public mail lists, 3)
Benefits to users and 4) Contacting us.
1)
RemarQ currently provides Internet discussion services (Usenet
newsgroups and custom message boards) via the RemarQ web site and
co-branded partner web sites. Currently people can use our web interface
to search or browse a directory of message boards to find a group they
are interested in and read the discussions in that group. To participate
in the group (post a message) they must register with a valid email
address. RemarQ confirms users' email addresses before allowing them to
post messages.
2)
We support public mail lists in a similar way, but with several key
changes.
A) Mail lists have been added to our searchable index and our directory,
so people are able to find them in the same way they find Usenet
newsgroups or custom groups. We obtained our “list of lists” exclusively
from Stephanie daSilva's Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists. If your list
is not on PAML and you would like to have us include your list please
email mail_lists@remarq.com. You can visit our mail list suggestion page
http://www.remarq.com/suggestmailinglist.q and enter your mail list
information directly into our form to suggest a new list or update an
existing list. If your list is on PAML and you do not want us to include
your list please send email to mail_lists@remarq.com.
B) Mail lists are designated as "subscription required" and RemarQ
performs only the client end function of a mail list, leaving the
subscription approval process in the hands of the list owner. To access
a mail list users have to subscribe to the list. Only registered users
with valid email addresses are able to subscribe to a list. RemarQ
simplifies the subscription process by creating a unique email address
for the user and then sending a subscribe email to the list on their
behalf. The user cannot view list content until we receive confirmation
from the list owner that the user is successfully subscribed.
C) RemarQ does not archive mail lists. Once a user is successfully
subscribed, they are able to read discussions from the date of their
subscription approval. If the user is unsubscribed from the list they
are not allowed to see any messages in the list from that point forward.
RemarQ simplifies unsubscribing for users by placing an "unsubscribe"
button in the user interface.
E) Users who are subscribed to a list can post messages to that list via
RemarQ. RemarQ will send messages to the list on the user's behalf. The
user's email address will appear with their messages, so they have an
identity in the list and so people can respond directly to them.
F) RemarQ does not publish the member list of any mail list. Based on
the response of list owners, clicking the member tab in mail lists now
surfaces a confidentiality message. Email addresses of list members
appear only if a subscribed member of a list clicks the sender’s name in
the header of a message. This functions exactly as if the user had
subscribed through a mail client.
3)
We believe that making it possible to read and participate in email
lists via the RemarQ interface has 4 main user benefits:
+ Makes it easier for you to subscribe and unsubscribe to a mailing list
+ Keeps your email inbox from being overwhelmed with mail list messages
+ Allows you to better manage your list participation using RemarQ
features like discussion threading, watched discussions, ignored
discussions, and searching within a group.
+ Helps promote access to mail lists
4)
In implementing support for mail lists we have consulted with Alan
Schwartz (author of Mailing Lists published by O'Reilly) and Stephanie
da Silva (owner of PAML). Our intention is to create a community that is
both convenient for users and respectful of list owners. Consequently,
we are always looking for feedback from list members and owners alike.
Please send us any suggestions that might help us improve our service to
the mail list community to mail lists@remarq.com.
Thank you,
Barry Saik, Director of Product Management
Eric Leach, Content Programming and Web Support
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From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 22 10:56:06 2000
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To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: mass s*bscr*be attempt
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 13:52:30 -0500
From: Mitch Collinsworth
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Early this morning I received a couple of (possibly forged, possibly not)
mass s*bscr*be attempts from "Spam Man" .
Each contained a long list of -request and other list admin addresses
in the To: header and a multipart/alternative (blech) body containing:
s*bscr*be * india times
The initial Received: headers look like:
Received: from byronnz.demon.co.uk ([212.229.93.210] helo=byrons)
by anchor-post-31.mail.demon.net with smtp (Exim 2.12 #1)
id 12Xfce-000LQo-0V; Wed, 22 Mar 2000 07:32:09 +0000
You may want to check your logs for similar stuff.
-Mitch
From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 22 13:40:03 2000
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To: "Joe Ferguson"
cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: mass s*bscr*be attempt
In-Reply-To: Message from "Joe Ferguson"
of "Wed, 22 Mar 2000 14:24:01 MST."
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 16:41:21 -0500
From: Mitch Collinsworth
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>Pardon my ignorance - but what would this do? What was his intended result?
>
>> Early this morning I received a couple of (possibly forged, possibly not)
>> mass s*bscr*be attempts from "Spam Man" .
Well the possibilities that occur to me, none of which are new:
- It may have been forged by someone else, as an attempt to mail-bomb
the real owner of this address with the content of hundreds of lists.
- It could be a spammer collecting e-mail addresses.
- It could be another one of those "helpful" web sites that collects
your list content and makes it available on their web site.
There are probably more that I haven't thought of. In any case it's
pretty unlikely to be someone honestly interested in reading about a
long list of carefully alphabetized but unrelated subjects...
-Mitch
From list-managers-owner Wed Mar 22 17:24:30 2000
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Wed, 22 Mar 2000 20:23:50 -0500
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 20:23:50 -0500
From: David Shaw
To: Eric Leach
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Mail Lists on RemarQ
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On Tue, Mar 21, 2000 at 11:55:15AM -0800, Eric Leach wrote:
> A) Mail lists have been added to our searchable index and our
> directory,
>
> so people are able to find them in the same way they find Usenet
> newsgroups or custom groups. We obtained our “list of lists”
> exclusively
>
> from Stephanie daSilva's Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists. If your list
>
> is not on PAML and you would like to have us include your list please
> email mail_lists@remarq.com. You can visit our mail list suggestion page
>
> http://www.remarq.com/suggestmailinglist.q and enter your mail list
> information directly into our form to suggest a new list or update an
> existing list. If your list is on PAML and you do not want us to include
>
> your list please send email to mail_lists@remarq.com.
Opt out. Ah yes, that works well.
"If you don't want to get any more of our *targeted* special emails
just for you then just send a message to ...."
> C) RemarQ does not archive mail lists. Once a user is successfully
> subscribed, they are able to read discussions from the date of their
> subscription approval. If the user is unsubscribed from the list they
> are not allowed to see any messages in the list from that point forward.
Okay, say I subscribe to a list, and then don't read for a month. If
I read then, do I get the past month? How about if I read two months
later? A year?
You may be restricting people on what they can read, but in what way
is this not archiving? How long do you keep files containing list
messages on disk?
David
--
David Shaw | dshaw@jabberwocky.com | WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence." - Jeremy S. Anderson
From list-managers-owner Thu Mar 23 08:06:17 2000
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Message-ID: <38DA41B3.3B03847A@remarq.com>
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 08:09:23 -0800
From: Eric Leach
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To: David Shaw
CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Mail Lists on RemarQ
References: <38D7D3A2.9DDBD1F8@remarq.com> <20000322202350.G3611@akamai.com>
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David Shaw wrote:
*You may be restricting people on what they can read, but in what way
is this not archiving? How long do you keep files containing list
messages on disk?*
Text messages generally expire within 60 to 90 days, depending on the volume of
the group. This is true for either usenet newsgroups or mail lists on our site.
Binary messages will expire in about 7 days. When you subscribe to the group, you
see messages as soon as the subscription is approved by the list, but if you wait
six months to read any messages, you may only see things from the last 90 days or
so. So we do not archive in the sense that we don't save messages indefinitely
for later retrieval.
Eric
David Shaw wrote:
> C) RemarQ does not archive mail lists. Once a user is successfully subscribed,
they are able to read discussions from the date of their subscription approval.
If the user is unsubscribed from the list they are not allowed to see any
messages in the list from that point forward.
>
> Okay, say I subscribe to a list, and then don't read for a month. If
> I read then, do I get the past month? How about if I read two months
> later? A year?
>
> You may be restricting people on what they can read, but in what way
> is this not archiving? How long do you keep files containing list
> messages on disk?
>
> David
>
> --
> David Shaw | dshaw@jabberwocky.com | WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/
> +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
> "There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
> We don't believe this to be a coincidence." - Jeremy S. Anderson
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From list-managers-owner Sun Mar 26 07:36:34 2000
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From: "Alan S. Harrell"
To: list-managers-digest@greatcircle.com
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 09:35:50 -0600
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Subject: Re: Mail Lists on RemarQ
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On 21 Mar 2000, at 11:55, Eric Leach wrote:
> A) Mail lists have been added to our searchable index and our
> directory, so people are able to find them in the same way they
> find Usenet newsgroups or custom groups. We obtained our =93list of
> lists=94 exclusively from Stephanie daSilva's Publicly Accessible
> Mailing Lists. If your list is not on PAML and you would like to
> have us include your list please email mail_lists@remarq.com. You
> can visit our mail list suggestion page
> http://www.remarq.com/suggestmailinglist.q and enter your mail list
> information directly into our form to suggest a new list or update
> an existing list. If your list is on PAML and you do not want us to
> include your list please send email to mail_lists@remarq.com.
Herein belies a profound ignorance on your part in the basic
differences of the USENET newsgroup forum and the mailing list forum.
You are attempting to view them both from the same philosophy and
this just cannot be accepted by the owners of mailing lists.
USENET newsgroups are impersonal vehicles where third party archiving
and indexing and other servers do not intrude on any individual's
rights. Mailing lists are *owned* by individuals that put both their
time and/or money into the efforts involved in maintaining these
forums for their subscribers. Hence, by indexing the fruits of
another's labors, you are stealing from the owners.
> B) Mail lists are designated as "subscription required" and RemarQ
> performs only the client end function of a mail list, leaving the
> subscription approval process in the hands of the list owner. To
> access a mail list users have to subscribe to the list. Only
> registered users with valid email addresses are able to subscribe
> to a list. RemarQ simplifies the subscription process by creating a
> unique email address for the user and then sending a subscribe
> email to the list on their behalf. The user cannot view list
> content until we receive confirmation from the list owner that the
> user is successfully subscribed.
>
> C) RemarQ does not archive mail lists. Once a user is successfully
> subscribed, they are able to read discussions from the date of
> their subscription approval. If the user is unsubscribed from the
> list they are not allowed to see any messages in the list from that
> point forward.
>
> RemarQ simplifies unsubscribing for users by placing an
> "unsubscribe" button in the user interface.
List owners do_NOT_want you involved in the administration of their
mailing lists. A third party can ONLY involve themselves in the
administration of mailing list when they have the express permission
of the listowner.
> E) Users who are subscribed to a list can post messages to that
> list via RemarQ. RemarQ will send messages to the list on the
> user's behalf. The user's email address will appear with their
> messages, so they have an identity in the list and so people can
> respond directly to them.
No, they may not. No list owner of any experience would ever allow
this, nor any other form of administration unless as stated
previously, prior permission was granted. Had you been on this list
before, you would have noted that many of the administrators here
have placed filters blocking your requests and others are just
deleting upon receipt. Rather than doing your users any favors, you
are doing them a grave disservice by misleading them into thinking
they are able to administer to their mailing lists.
> F) RemarQ does not publish the member list of any mail list. Based
> on the response of list owners, clicking the member tab in mail
> lists now surfaces a confidentiality message. Email addresses of
> list members appear only if a subscribed member of a list clicks
> the sender=92s name in the header of a message. This functions
> exactly as if the user had subscribed through a mail client.
We are not convinced. RemarQ's actions are highly distrustful and
suspect. No site's Privacy Statements can be believed when that site
has banner ads of third party sponsors. The privacy of the users
shall always take a back seat to the desires of paying sponsors. Any
other view can only be considered Internet naivete.
> 3)
> We believe that making it possible to read and participate in email
> lists via the RemarQ interface has 4 main user benefits:
Arrogance on your part. The responsibility to the subscriber rests
solely with the listowner and not RemarQ or any other third party.
Your "beliefs" are without foundation.
> 4) In implementing support for mail lists we have consulted with
> Alan Schwartz (author of Mailing Lists published by O'Reilly) and
> Stephanie da Silva (owner of PAML). Our intention is to create a
> community that is both convenient for users and respectful of list
> owners. Consequently, we are always looking for feedback from list
> members and owners alike. Please send us any suggestions that might
> help us improve our service to the mail list community to mail
> lists@remarq.com.
Neither Alan Schwartz nor Stephanie da Silva owns my lists and they
have absolutely no say on how I conduct my lists. In point of fact,
if this is what Schwartz is truly recommending to you, and we have
our doubts, then his credibility has dropped considerably. And as
concerns the PAML site, it would not surprise me that this opinion
was bought.
Instead of lecturing us, stop and listen to us. In order for RemarQ
to properly provide mailing list services to their users, they MUST
first obtain in writing, express permission from the owners of the
mailing lists. You cannot take information from public announcement
sites such as PAML for your purposes. The listowner listed their
lists with these announcement services for their own purposes and did
not do so with RemarQ's benefits in mind. Assumptions to the
contrary cannot be allowed.
Your actions have been no less than thievery. You are stealing from
the listowners that which they have built from their own hard work
and often, as in my case, their own money. RemarQ should offer to
remunerate any listowner to which damages have been incurred.
RemarQ is becoming a site held in great revulsion by many of the most
influential netizens of our Internet. In my position, I often have
the need and opportunity to recommend USENET WWW gateway sites to my
subscribers and I have made it my crusade in the past few months to
steer all of them away from RemarQ.
We strongly recommend that RemarQ heed our advice.
Alan S. Harrell
Administrator@ASHLists.org
http://www.ashlists.org/
From list-managers-owner Mon Mar 27 10:38:36 2000
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To: SPAM-L@peach.ease.lsoft.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Cc: abuse@topica.com, abuse@egroups.com, dru@egroups.com,
postmaster@paypal.com, delph@netmeridian.com, abuse@earthlink.net
Subject: MISC: New pyramid scheme involving PAYPAL.COM, TOPICA.COM, EGROUPS.COM
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 10:50:17 -0800
Message-ID: <54322.954183017@monkeys.com>
From: "Ronald F. Guilmette"
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
The following interesting new spamvertizment dropped into my spamtraps
yesterday.
It appears that Internet pyramid schemers are getting more sophisticated.
This one is hoping to get his victims to pay him via credit card payments
made via PayPal.com. I guess that puts this scheme into the realm of wire
fraud, yes?
Oh yea... and he suggests to his victims that they should snoop around on
www.egroups.com and www.topica.com for lists of additional sub-level victim
e-mail addresses that THEY can then spam.
Spam sent via earthlink, of course.
The spammer's real web page seems to be www.link-me-up.com.
===============================================================================
>From davewilson@about.com Sun Mar 26 16:51:-- 2000
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Message-Id:
From: "David Wilson"
To: ------@----------.---"
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 19:56:-- -0500
Subject: Yabadabbado
Reply-To: davewilson@about.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
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The Great Yabadabbado Original Just Got Better!
I am the Yabadabbado list owner. We started the promotion program to grow
our Safelist. It made a lot of people money! Now it has been improved, and
is moderated! It is making even more money legally, honestly, and in
control! If you are in already, use the new wording for your ads. If not,
why not join today!
Let's Chase Away The Poor Man Blues and Have Some Real Fun!
And what's More Fun Than Making Money On The Internet?
Help us grow our Yabadabbado Safelist and you will Make thousands of dollars
in A Matter of weeks!
Here's a perfectly legal way to make hundreds of dollars this month and
every month thereafter. Here's how it works.
1. Go to PayPal (join if you haven't yet) at
https://secure.paypal.com/refer/pal=drwilson%40themail.com
and "beam" $5 to the e-mail address in the #1 position on the list below. Also,
"beam" $2 to
the yabadabbado safelist moderator at maryann@cirigliano.com The moderator
will invite you to join the list when the $2 has been received via PayPal.
This keeps the program honest and increases profits and insures growth for all!
As a member of Yabadabbado Safelist, you will be able to post to the entire
group (soon to be $10,000 strong!) once per day. This is the legal service
that you are paying $5 for. When you join PayPal, you will get $5.00 placed in
your PayPal account. So participating in this program costs you only $2.00 -
$2 to make thousands! What a bargain!
AND, you will be able to use PayPal to accept credit card payments for all
your other Internet businesses!
2. After you have done that, delete the e-mail address in the #1
position,move the other four e-mail addresses up and enter your e-mail
address in the #5 position, then copy the new list and message just as it is
and mail it to at least 100 other e-mail addresses. (use the spamfree
safelists at www.egroups.com and www.topica.com ) In fact, mail to as many
people as you can! Keep mailing until PayPal notifies you that 10 people
have joined under you. This won't take long!
3. When your name reaches the #1 position, you could possibly have
approximately 10,000 people sending you $5 = $50,000, and because the list
is now moderated, no one will be able to circumvent the rules! You can join
as often as you like! This is perfectly moral and legal. You are selling
information and a service for $5! Don't reinvent the wheel, leave the letter
as is except for the new list!
Have a great time with this! It works, and it's fun! Here's the list. Make
sure you send the $5 to the person in position #1 AND $2 to the list
moderator.
#1 danwmc1@aol.com
#2 majka@cni2.net
#3 earnmegabucks@usa.net
#4 workshop@hottubhammocks.com
#5 drwilson@themail.com
You will also make $1,000 from PayPal referrals if you put your PayPal URL
in this message! You can do this as often as you like!
Remember that cheating will never be blessed! Resist temptation. If you
abuse the listing, you will be dropped from Yabadabbado. Do the right thing,
and wait for the beams of cash to come your way! Promote this program for
fun among all your e-mail associates. It will not interfere with any other
program you're in! And use some of the money for a good cause! Have a great
time!
We will make every effort on our part to REMOVE and BLOCK your e-mail address
if you do not want to receive our e-mails for using our service!! All we ask
is that you use our remove service and work with us!! AGAIN, PLEASE WORK WITH
US!! You Can Remove yourself at
http://www.link-me-up.com/
Warm Regards,
Angelo
From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 28 12:52:13 2000
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To: list-managers-digest@greatcircle.com
Subject: Re: Mail Lists on RemarQ
In-reply-to: <38D7D3A2.9DDBD1F8@remarq.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 12:46:49 -0800
From: Michelle Dick
Message-Id: <20000328204650.6555799C8B@waltz.rahul.net>
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Eric wrote:
> 4)
> In implementing support for mail lists we have consulted with Alan
> Schwartz (author of Mailing Lists published by O'Reilly) and Stephanie
> da Silva (owner of PAML). Our intention is to create a community that is
>
> both convenient for users and respectful of list owners.
My list is available in a publicly-viewable threaded live web
interface, funded through banner advertising. The revenues from this
advertising acrue to me so that I may continue offering the list to
the public. List members who wish a threaded web interface instead of
email have this available to them currently.
Is it respectful of list owners for you to take that same web content,
repackage it so that my advertising does not appear, and instead
replace that advertising with your own? Robbing my list of revenue?
> Consequently,
> we are always looking for feedback from list members and owners alike.
> Please send us any suggestions that might help us improve our service to
> the mail list community to mail lists@remarq.com.
Please allow me to configure your interface so that it displays MY
banner advertising instead of yours. I can provide the javascript
needed. Thank you.
--
Michelle Dick artemis@rahul.net East Palo Alto, CA
From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 28 14:07:32 2000
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Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 14:19:13 -0800
To: Michelle Dick , list-managers-digest@GreatCircle.COM
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: Re: Mail Lists on RemarQ
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
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>Is it respectful of list owners for you to take that same web content,
>repackage it so that my advertising does not appear, and instead
>replace that advertising with your own? Robbing my list of revenue?
I'd also love to know what anti-spammer/anti-harvesting protections
you make for the e-mail addresses you publish. Unlike Michelle, I
don't banner advertise my archives, since I'm not worried about
revenue. but I categorically refuse ALL attempts to archive my lists,
because anyone who archives my lists where they're not under control
puts that information onto the web in a way I can't police.
I don't want my lists archived by anyone, period. Especially without
my permission, and I have sent out a couple of cease and desists over
the last year or so. And it's because I'm responsible for protecting
my users from the spam harvesters out there, and I've yet to be
convinced anyone actually protects their data to my satisfaction
(heck *I* don't protect my data to my satisfaction yet, but I'm
working on it)
I get especially honked off when I offer my users a given level of
service and expectations about access and privacy, and the find out
someone else has just gone off and borrowed my content and stuffed it
onto the net for me. Without asking.
And, of course, if I ever do decide to do banner ads or some other
kind of subscription/revenue thing, I wouldn't be happy to find that
my content is in competition with myself from some other site without
my permission.
--
--
Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com)
And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar
and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'"
From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 28 22:08:54 2000
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To: Chuq Von Rospach
Cc: Michelle Dick , list-managers-digest@GreatCircle.COM
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Subject: anti-spammer/anti-harvesting protections
In-reply-to: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 14:19:13 -0800.
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 08:16:52 +0200
From: Aumont - Comite Reseaux des Universites
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
> I'd also love to know what anti-spammer/anti-harvesting protections
> you make for the e-mail addresses you publish.
The harvesting of emails in the web is one of biggest source of spam.
Let me describe what we do in the Sympa's web interface for pretection.
-1- In order to access to archives, users have to post a form.
Because most robots don't follow post links this is a great
protection.
-2- Archives access are controled by sympa it self (not by apache) so
the list config can specify that the archive is restricted to
subscribers (or to owners, or intranet users or any other
definition). This is a very effective protection.
Now we do not need anymore harvester poisoning tool. We still use
at the root of how web server a configuration taht reject some
kind of browers. (http://mosa.unity.ncsu.edu/~brabec/antispam.html).
Serge Aumont
From list-managers-owner Tue Mar 28 22:23:54 2000
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References: <200003290616.IAA26729@home.cru.fr>
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 22:31:59 -0800
To: Aumont - Comite Reseaux des Universites ,
Chuq Von Rospach
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: Re: anti-spammer/anti-harvesting protections
Cc: Michelle Dick